This is a guest post by Anna Holcombe, who attended her first Social Media Club Chicago event on April 28 at our Social Media Cabaret with SOBCon at the Drake Hotel. 

As a recent graduate of a public relations and advertising program who has a hard time choosing which shoes to wear in the morning, I can relate to SOBCon (Successful Online Business Conference) co-founder Terry Starbucker’s latest blog post, What Was Your Fork In The Road, And Did You Take It?, which I read before I attended my first SMC Chicago event Thursday, April 28th, at the Drake Hotel. Sitting in a Michigan Avenue café on a rainy day with my laptop, Starbucker's tale of a time when he was faced with a crucial decision resonated with me. He had realized the importance of “doing something” at the fork in the road rather than “doing nothing.” He quotes Yogi Berra, who said, “When you get to a fork in the road, take it.”

The post reminded me why I was heading to SMC in the first place. I had to grab the reins of inertia not long ago and choose a master’s program after working in membership development marketing. I chose public relations and advertising because I wanted to incorporate social media into my marketing mix. To me, and I’m sure to many people working with social media, it's exciting to see those forks in the road, especially when they aren’t always easy to identify. 

I came away from my first SMC event feeling inspired. Folks were extremely friendly and forthcoming, sharing with me their experiences navigating forks in the road here in Chicago . I talked to people working in both corporate and non-profit marketing, bloggers, and those who had recently started their own public relations business. With each person I met, I got the sense that this group of people was a supportive bunch, continuously encouraging one another to make the leap from a panic-stricken “I can’t do this" moment to a “I’m going to do something" affirmation. 

It's these kinds of connections that help move me beyond the nitty-gritty feeling of doing nothing in my job search to doing something. And this is why my first time at SMC will not be my last. When I grab a cup coffee with some of the people whom I met at SMC, I might falter between deciding on a latte or an americano, but it’s conversations like the ones which I have in SMC which help move us forward.

Anna Holcombe maintains a blog about Millennials and social innovation in the private sector. She brings momentum in her job search from networking at events like SMC Chicago . She can be reached at annaholcombe <at> yahoo <dot> com.

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