Connecting with communities

A conference and a retreat provide equally valuable but very different experiences

It's been a busy couple of weeks, with work but also with time well spent away from my desk. Last week I wrote here about attending the Elevate conference with 30,000 others in Toronto, learning about topics on tech, arts and work and fangirling a little over big-name speakers like Venus Williams and Chris Hadfield. This week I got a break of a totally different kind, with a two-day retreat put together by a business development group I've joined over the past year called the Copywriter Club, which has help me think about new directions for my business and meet some equally ambitious new colleagues along the way.

Each of these were of great value to me. They both pulled me out of my own everyday business and work life to inspire bigger thoughts about my work/life goals and how to get there.

At the same time, they were both very different. At a conference, especially such a large one, you get exposed to new ideas and encounter different speakers and learn a lot of new information. But you also feel alone together in a sea of other learners. Also when you attend sessions that are in your wheelhouse, but not in your professional expertise, you get a lot of cross-pollination; for example, I learned about new things happening in banking, business, the start-up ecosystem and other industries. Could these shifts apply to the writing field as well? And are any of them worth pitching stories about? The answer to that second question is that I already have.

At the writers' retreat, the learning was focused on business development or copywriting, a deeper dive into a field I already know well, alongside others who are also trying to move their craft forward and learn about new elements to implement in their businesses, from processes to mindset leaps. Each of us is thinking about what will work for our particular operation, and how to prioritize which to work on first. Thanks to my months-long involvement in the group, I also know all the participants via regular meetings and the various communications channels. We share advice regularly, which makes it comfortable to ask and answer questions in these longer sessions. There’s also some accountability built in, with post-retreat goal setting.

Now that I've taken in both types of event, it's time to settle down with myself for some quiet time to think about what to do with what I've learned. And no doubt I'll also be seeking out the next conference or retreat, for their value in helping me grow.