Let's MINGLE: Networking Formula to Find Support and Build Community with Bela Gaytan

Does the thought of networking make you cringe?  Are you confused about what to say, how often to post, or which platforms to use?  You’re not alone!  Networking can feel confusing with so much conflicting information out there.  But it doesn’t have to be difficult or dreaded!  Using her MINGLE formula, Bela will guide you through how to genuinely connect with people to find support, offer value, and build your community.  Bonus: she won’t tell you to do anything that you won’t want to do!

Luis Malbas  
Welcome back, everybody final day of the transitioning to learning and development conference. So glad that you're here. Let me take a look. I'm just going to check this session out to see if we're getting the room populated. Yes. Love it. Okay, so seeing everybody starting to come in, it feels like an actual real conference. When I do this, you know, I'm like, Oh, I'm just to wrap a few things up. I have some thank yous. I want to let everyone know, when we started this out, I thought maybe we'd get like three to 400, registrants, and attendees. And as of right now, we had 763 people register for this conference. And that is a really, really significant number. And I hope that for everyone that's registered that this has helped you with your, your journey to l&d or not, you know, depending upon what you found out this week, I know that those replays in the recordings are going to get hit up a whole bunch, because there was just so much wonderful content this week. So please enjoy. And on the top on the subject of the recordings, I am going to format those recordings and release them probably sometime next week. I probably have time this weekend to get to it too. But there's a lot of them. But I'm going to end up releasing them all on a resource page for for everybody to use and to share. So keep an eye out for that. Later on. Before Bailey gets started. I'm just going to do a quick I have some thank yous right. First of all, I want to thank our sponsors. We had ID, Lance Parker, and Andrea and Lanie. Thank you so much for for sponsoring the event. Karen north and the learning camel. And then of course Kayleen Holt of Scissortail Creative Services. Thanks for sponsoring. And then we also had a really, really cool group of advisors that we had a private Slack channel that where we kind of discuss what was going on. And you know, there are some folks that did a whole bunch are some folks that kind of, you know, just contributed a little or sat in the back and alert. That's how it works really for whenever I look for advisors, I just want some folks to be to participate and be a part of it. Bayla is one of them Devin Torres Emily Capps Jennifer Antoon, Jennifer Nadan. Heidi Kirby Joe Cook, Joelle adored, who was Speaker yesterday Caitlin Lanius. Vaughn, Laura Middlesworth Nick fluoro, Star Peterson, tireless ARD, Tom McDowell, who is heading up a panel right after this. Thank you so much for being part of the team that helped build this one. And then, of course, I want to thank all of our speakers that spoke this week, and then our table hosts who have been absolutely amazing. One of the ones that has just sort of stands out to me is Ricky Fisher, because he's kind of just been in there every day doing stuff. And his table has been well populated. And also the few that that came in and added later, like, Rick Jacobs came in and added one and even Stiva came in. So those table, those virtual tables have been great. If you want to continue having conversations with T ALDC. Like, you know, I guess 24/7 If you want, we have a Slack group at TLD chat.us. So TLD, CH a t.us. If you go there, that'll take us to take you to the slack group. If you're not already joined up there, feel free to pop in. Take a look at some of the stuff we're talking about. I rarely check in about events and things like that we post resources and questions and links. I just saw James tuck just just joined via TLD chat just popped up on my screen. So yeah, please feel free to join us there. And let's see, what do I got on my list here? Oh, I'm probably gonna send out a survey because I really want to find out whether or not the schedule works for everybody. Because future large events, I'll probably do this way it feels more like a regular conference to me, which is kind of more my wheelhouse I used to produce live events. And so keep an eye out for that. There may be a TLD C live conference coming up in the future. All right. So with that, I am going to introduce our wonderful speaker Bailey Gaytan, who has spoken for TL dc in the past. I think you were in the ADC event. Right was yes. A wonderful conference. Thank you so much. And we were just chatting about about our topic today let's mingle networking formula to find support and build community. Keep an eye out on baileigh She has some really, really wonderful things to say and that she has been working with. And I think this one of the keys to your success in this space, maybe right through this session. So with that bail, I'm gonna go and hide myself from the stage and let you take over

Bela Gaytan  
oops Okay, can everyone hear me and see me? Awesome. Thank you so much. Luis, I want to start off by thanking you for everything that you do for TL DC and everything for this conference. If we could throw up some emojis for him, he is freaking fantastic. So I will get my presentation started. And I swear I'm not a newbie, but every time I do this I'm like searching around for all my windows. So let's see. Let me get this rolling

Okay, can you all see my screen? Wonderful, thank you. So as Louis said, the topic of my talk is let's mingle a networking formula to find support, and build community. I'll start off with a little bit about myself. My name is Bella guide, then my pronouns are she and her but I'm fine with any that are used respectfully. A little bit about me professionally. I work as a technical instructional designer at Pantheon with the glorious Heidi Kirby. I am also the community and social media manager for the elearning designers Academy with the also glorious Tim Slade. In the free time that I have, I'm a front end web developer and also a diversity equity inclusion and accessibility advocate. I have a bachelor of science and human resources and a Master of Education in learning and technology. A little bit about me personally, I am queer, I'm neuro divergent. I'm also physically disabled and I am Latina. Chicana. To be specific. I have explored eight countries on three continents. I've been to eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and one disputed territory surrounded by landmines. That's an interesting story asked me about it sometime. I am a plant mama a cat lover and I'm a gaming nerd. I am fueled by cats comedy and coffee. If you can talk about any of those three, you'll be an instant friend for life. Hashtag big Bella energy. That's just my dorky little hashtag I've started visual description of myself. I am a light skinned Latina. I have short, dark, curly, asymmetrical hair, blue green eyes. I have a large gold nose piercing dark purple lipstick very colorful eyeshadow. I am wearing I don't know how to describe the shirt. It looks like the colorblind thing that you get at the doctor's office and I am colorblind. So I know that pretty well. But it's a very colorful sleeveless shirt. Behind me I have a very soothing sage green wall and you might see some of my plant babies in the background. So enough about me, I would love if Thank you, Clarissa Clarissa says I love the visual description. Yeah. If I can teach you all anything today, please provide visual descriptions when you do any type of live event. So if anyone is visually impaired or not able to be at the computer as they're participating, they will have an opportunity to have an equitable experience with the program. So let us move on. Well, before we move on, I'm trying to remember what slide is next. I would love to know from everyone here. How How do you feel when someone starts talking to you about networking professionally? And I'm taking a look at the chat which I have on this side. Devon terrified, stuck of Amanda claiming Oh, I love that. Hi, Amanda. I told some of my co workers at Pantheon about this event and it warms my heart to see folks here so love my path yours. I have to make a real effort. Melissa, awkward Cecilia, a tricky dance Mila. I love to network Daniel. I mean, Daniel, my apologies. Yeah, Kaylee and another anxious. Ashley says I used to hate it. But now I've found ways in doing it with authenticity. Actually. You're You're right up my alley with that. So Nicole panic. Yeah. So I love seeing all these different reactions. But what are what what's the common thread here that we're seeing? Most folks are not expressing that they enjoy networking or they they get excited.

And I hope that I can change that for you. So I forgot to put in like a transition Live, so bear with me. I created this formula mingle as an acronym to help you be able to find ways that you can connect with people authentically. And not feel like networking is such a chore. I don't want anyone to dread it, I want you to have fun with it. And I want you to be able to see all the different opportunities that can come from networking. Spoiler alert, I will give specific examples at the end of this talk. So let's jump on into it. Because I want to make sure that I have plenty of time for folks to ask questions for the chat to become alive with you know, interaction, because that's networking, we are networking right now, I am with all of you, you're all with all of me. And it's just, it's so much fun. Like I'm truly excited. So let me jump right in. So let's start with the M and mingle M is for motivation. Oh, and a side note, I will make this slide deck into a downloadable PDF. After the event. If you look in the Resources tab, or if someone wants to toss it in chat as well, if folks are not able to see where the Resource tab is, you can connect on my website, subscribe to my newsletter, and you'll be alerted whenever I add the information to my website. That way you can focus on this event and not feel like you have to write things down or you're missing out. I want you all to be interacting with each other if you feel comfortable. So continuing, M is for motivation. Take a moment and identify what is your motivation and wanting to network in wanting to support with people connect with people and wanting to build your community? Are you looking for a new job? Are you new, you know, to the lnd space, which I'm assuming a lot of you are just based on the topic of this event? Do you want to feel like you belong? That's a very important thing, especially with impostor syndrome, which is so prevalent, and I've had impostor syndrome, I still get it sometimes. And I think one of the things that really helps with impostor syndrome is just feeling like you belong, finding others, your squad that you can talk to relate with and just feel seen with. You also want to take a moment to determine like, what is it that you want to gain from marketing with for mingling with others? Do you want to make friends that's valid, even though it's a professional space, like make friends, I've made some of my most amazing friends by mingling with folks, is it that you just want to learn more about lnd, you hope to connect with people that are able to provide content that teaches you and helps to, you know, enrich your experience in learning about learning and development. And also, another thing to do is identify how you can keep yourself motivated to mingle. And what I mean by that is some of us, you know, me, we may want to write it in a journal, we may want to do a checkbox or a sticker on our calendar for every day that we put forth an effort to mingle. For others. Maybe we like gamification, or we want to reward ourselves with some some type of little treat or experience or activity, but just find a way to you know, keep yourself motivated as well in being able to keep up with the networking. One thing that might be helpful when you're going through the main goal. Formula, I guess I can call it is to have a notebook or to keep notes on. You know, your progress, your processes, what works, what doesn't. So I want to pause for a moment because I really try to make this as interactive as possible. I don't like to feel like I'm up here talking all the time. What are some of your motivations for wanting to learn to better network wanting to find people that support you wanting to build out your community? If you'll toss it in the chat? I'd love to see that.

To learn from others in the field Kayleen. Yeah. Daniel, thank you. I appreciate your kind words. Let's see. All these kind of jumped up at once. So learning from others and connection in a digital space. Yes, step and I feel that learn from others. Nikki says help understanding the new job field I'm trying to get into Yes. support people to bounce ideas off of I like that vengi A sense of belonging Shakira. I'm glad I'm glad you brought that up. I stumble over my words a lot. A lot of times gang just bear with me if for some reason I say something that you don't understand. Please toss it in chat. I'll be Happy to try to say it in a different way. Kayleen also I have disabilities that caused me to live a very isolated life. So connecting with others virtually is really helpful for maintaining my sanity. Yes, I understand that completely. I'm also disabled. And I'm neurodivergent as well. So it's sometimes it's much more comfortable for me to connect digitally. Clarissa feeling connected with others with similar goals and interests? Yeah, yeah, sir, all social interaction. I love all of these so much. And that's my same reasons for you know, wanting to network as well. These are all great reasons. And I really hope that you'll take away actionable things that you can do with the mangle formula. So let's move on to I include, did I really I did look at me, I forgot to change the picture. Bear with me on that. Just pretend it something really cool and unique and different. So include, and I have two sides to include, first of all, include others in your networking journey. What do I mean by that? One of the ways that you can do that is if you're not sure of like, what type of content to post or you feel like writing or, you know, making something creative and appetizing on social media is a chore for you find something that someone else has posted. And I won't necessarily recommend to share it directly on LinkedIn or Twitter without adding something to it doesn't have to be anything elaborate. But unfortunately, algorithms exist. And a lot of times, if you simply just share something, it gets no traction, and you're kind of minimizing. Not minimizing, but you're reducing your audience that's able to see that content. So I would recommend starting a new post tag some folks in the post, within reason, you know, don't tag 27 people on a post that says like, Oh, check this out, you know, and that's all you put on there. People will get very annoyed very quickly. And it really just feels inauthentic. It feels like you're just you're after a number, and not much else. So sparingly tag people in code in posts, tag people in comments, introduce people to each other people that have aligned goals. So let's say, Okay, I'll give an example using Caitlyn. She just mentioned that she's disabled in chat. I'm disabled as well, let's say I know that she has she loves dogs, you know, I might know someone who loves dogs and is in this field, and maybe they're disabled as well. And I could say, you know, Caitlin, I'd love to introduce you to Bella, you know, I think you too, would really get along. And you know, I think you guys have a lot in common. do stuff like that. You may not be able to, you know, connect everyone. But anytime that you can do that, it's it's such a wonderful way to like enrich your community. And I promise you, when you see people that have a lot of connections, it's because they've introduced other folks to each other, they've made a lot of connections for other folks. It's just, it has this magnifying effect. And it's wonderful. I love that we we have the power to help so many people just sitting here at home. Include yourself by knowing that you belong. I'm really big on people being authentic, but also people feeling that they belong. A lot of times, especially for folks that are marginalized like myself, it can be hard to feel like you belong in a space.

The learning and development community is phenomenal. It's a very wonderful group of really helpful people. But as a newcomer, you might again feel impostor syndrome, you might feel like there's no place for you to fit in. Know that you do belong. You deserve to be in all spaces, you're valuable. You have so much to offer. Even if you say or feel that you don't, I promise you that you do, I promise. The other side to including is to be inclusive. You'll reach a much larger audience when you do when you are inclusive. Your network comes alive because it's more diverse and it's the right thing to do be inclusive. Let's see here. Go to the next one. Caitlin, I do love dogs I know. All right. So the n in mingle natural meaning be natural. Be yourself. There is no one like you. No one like you. And when I say that, have you ever come across someone online? And maybe they're churning out a lot of content, but you just don't feel that they are making themselves a part of it, they're not infusing it with their flavor. I've come across that a lot of times, and to me, it's, you know, when I see something like that, I feel like it's just copy and pasted. Or I feel like, you know, they probably see this as a chore, someone probably told them that they need to post every day, or they're never going to make connections, or that they have to find a different topic to post on each time. Please don't, don't listen to that stuff. Because that's what makes networking a chore. That's what makes people feel, as you all said, terrified, I had a lot of, you know, in the comment, awkward, you know, anxious, just be yourself. I'm kind of skipping around here, but I'll go to the middle point. So don't do anything that you don't want to do. Post whenever you want. Be as active as you want. Interact with whoever you want. If you come across someone in the community that they just don't align with your goals and your ideals. There's no obligation for you to follow that person, interact with them, or connect with them. Don't feel like you have to ever, please please, please. Going back to the top, be yourself. There's no one quite like you. So focus on your current strengths, strengths and talents. What do I mean by that? If you're just new to l&d, and how can I put this? Let's say you don't have much experience with Articulate Storyline, okay? You can create a storyboard, you can do all this amazing stuff. But you've not started to learn, Articulate Storyline yet. Don't make yourself get on LinkedIn or Twitter and start churning out a bunch of Articulate Storyline content. That's not your strength. Will it be helpful? Maybe. But you're going to spend so much time trying to research that topic that networking loses it's it's, it's what's the word naturalness. I think that's a word. Heidi can concur that I'm always asking her Is this a word? Is that the right word. But when you do that, when you spend time researching a topic, and you're not just kind of speaking from your heart, and from your own skill set, it feels very sterile, and you'll spend so much time and then you might not get much interaction from it and you'll feel defeated, you'll feel crap, I really wasted so much time on that. And for what, you know, I don't want anyone to ever feel that feeling. And I felt it many times until I learned to be more natural and to you know, harness the power of my skills and my talents. And don't be afraid to be unique, you'll easily be remembered. I constantly tell people how dorky that I am. And I own that. And I'm happy about that. So people usually remember me for my dorky jokes that I'll tell. I love to use him as my content of jokes as well. So Hi, Tim, thank you, Please don't fire me.

And, you know, obviously, physically, I'm usually very unique and memorable just because of my tattoos. Do you need to go out and get sleeves and you know, full leg pieces like I have? No, but just be yourself. There's something unique about each one of us. And the more that you are authentic and yourself, the more that people are going to remember you. So I think that's really important. And finally, you're building your brand. You're building the you niche that is your niche you and you know people hear about building brands, and it's not like building brand doesn't mean that you go make your logo. Building your brand doesn't mean that you start your own business, you can start a business and not have your own brand. Your brand is what you want people to think of when they hear your name. When people hear Amy Smith, you know, you want them to think like oh, Amy's that instructional designer that loves to crochet. And she's always like, you know, doing these like live crochet events where she's crocheting and talking about instructional design. How unique is that? And I just made that up folks. I just I pulled something out of the universe on that one. I would love to know if anyone feels comfortable in sharing in chat plus, I want to see chat and I want to drink my coffee. What do you feel are some traits about yourself that are unique or what are some strengths that you have that you feel like you can start leveraging and beginning to mingle I love that Heidi everyone has something to add. Everyone has a story. I'm sure you're not the only one feeling like it's a one way street? You could simply talk about that. Yes, there is power in complaining. And I don't mean complaining in a bad way. We all have the right to complain. But there's there's there's power in complaining if like you feel like you're being taken advantage of you feel like you're being used. Do you feel like you don't belong? If you feel comfortable talk about it. I promise. I promise you, you will find so many people that reach out to you and are like, wow, I thought it was just me. I have felt alone. I didn't know that anyone else felt like that. tailing says, I relate to this. I used to feel this way too. Trust me, you do have valuable things. Ah, chat is blowing up now. Clarissa I'm an artist and a mom. I always say My time has never been so scarce. And my worth work ethic has never been so good. It's been amazing connect, connecting with other moms love that. Ooh, Carla, everybody looked at Carla said, I just started a series for jobseekers on LinkedIn, I post each day a tip. It's stuff I've learned along the way. And my goal is to save people time by not doing things the hard way like I have Carla, I absolutely love that. Feel free to drop your LinkedIn and chat. I think people could connect with you. And that would be super, super helpful. And that is in alignment with one of the things I'm passionate about, which is lived experience. The things that you've lived through the things that you have experienced through, you can teach people from your mistakes, from your hardships from you know, your your successes. And let's see, yeah, Kailyn Kailyn is definitely passionate about diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. Okay, folks, I'm gonna try to be mindful of time and move on. So the G give, I want to stress, give and take. And, disclaimer, I move around a lot. That's kind of part of my physical disabilities that I have. So I'm not trying to put my giant head in front of everyone's faces, I just have to move around a lot. So give, if I can teach you anything, please give and take. I will say it again, give and take. I think there's a very good reason why we don't say that the phrase is give and take and not take and give. This is very important because nobody wants someone to just constantly take from them. Think about a past relationship, whether romantic or like a friendship, platonic relationship, even a work relationship where someone constantly just took from you. How did you come away from that you probably felt used, you probably felt ignored. You probably felt like you know, I don't even matter to this person. They're just focused on themselves. It's the same thing in professional networking. I'll give you an example. Don't reach out to don't reach out to Karen north and just say, Hey, can you give me like a 10 hour session on how I can be an instructional designer?

Karen North would probably do it. But please don't do that I will come after you. Because I adore Kara. But I'm just using that as a really wild example. When you reach out to people, if you feel like you have nothing to give, and that's very common in new spaces. express sincere gratitude. When I say express sincere gratitude, say more than, hey, thank you. You know if you're reaching out to I'll use Tim Slade as an example, if you're reaching out to Tim. Hey, Tim, thanks for today's meeting. That's fine. But if you can add a little bit more to it, you become memorable. One way that you can do that is just say, Hey, Tim, thanks for today's session. It really resonated with me when you said you know not to do this or you know, you gave this tip I'm going to start implementing that into my own instructional design process. It just shows thoughtfulness, and it just it feels more sincere. The other way that you can give is to share posts and share resources. I talked about this earlier. If you come across a great post by someone linking to an article, feel free to start a new post on your page. Provide a little you know, a little bit of information at the top like I came across this article. I think it's great. Explain why you think it's great. And at the end, hey, I want to give a shout out to Ricky Fisher for originally posting this and bringing this to my attention. In that way you're helping out There's to see that content, you're also being thankful and thanking the person that you saw it from. And you'll, you'll just be helping so many people. I like to give the analogy don't show up to a potluck dinner without bringing a dish. For those that might not be familiar with that word, that term potluck dinner is a a meal where everyone is supposed to bring a dish. So maybe you're bringing a dessert, you're bringing the drinks, you're bringing, you know, the the meats or veggies. So don't show up to an event like that without bringing a dish, don't go, just eat, make sure that you're going to provide food as well. Help others. This is another thing that people new to any field might feel like they have nothing to offer, I promise you do. One of the ways that you can do that is share what you learned. If you went let's say at this session today, you could get on LinkedIn and say, Hey, I learned about this, this way to network. And one of the things I learned was, you know, to include others in my journey, that's just an example. There is someone if anyone knows, please drop it into the chat. I can't remember the her name. But she started I think a series called like, share what you know, or share what you learned. Um, some of you may know who I'm talking about, if anybody can put their name in the chat, and possibly even a link. Yes, Heidi got it. If anybody could put a link like either to Amy's LinkedIn or website or something that will be cool. I really love that she like has done that. And she has been able to help so many people by just sharing what she has learned. Another way that you can help others is, you know, connect with people new to learning and development. You can help each other as you go through, you know, the journey, you can say like, oh, have you followed Heidi Kirby or you know, did you see this event that's going to happen? Those are ways that you can help. Another thing is to offer feedback to people. That one be a little bit careful. Because for some people, feedback is a very sensitive topic. If someone shares their website, and they're not really asking for feedback, and you say, Oh, I'd love to give feedback on this. Just be careful, try to try to be mindful of that. And if you feel like you might not be able to read the room, meaning, you know, understand if you should offer feedback or not, then just err on. Be cautious. And just don't, I struggle with that sometimes because I tend to be a fixer and a helper. And I have to remind myself often that people are sharing something with me, they're not specifically asking for my opinion. And the other thing with giving is give yourself the care, sauce, what to say it needs, give yourself the care that you need, I promise I will clean these slides up before I make it available on my site. But you know, in all of this and everything that you do in a professional sense, with networking, having a job, like take care of yourself, put yourself first

you have to be selfish in taking care of yourself and putting yourself first because that's the most important thing I like to equate it to when you're on a plane. What do they tell you to do? If you get into an emergency, you put on your oxygen mask first, and then you help others. So using that term, I want you to put your mask on first, before your networking and trying to help others. Looking at the time, Okay, moving on, I will be trying to have plenty of time for questions and such at the end. Okay, so l learn. And isn't this so appropriate for us being in learning and development? Learn from others trying to get my mouse to stop moving learn from others. So what do I mean by that? Let's say you follow someone that's one of the you know, the more recognized names and lnd. Where do they hang out? What associations do they belong to? What organizations do they belong to? Which tools and websites? are they referring to often? What conferences and events are they involved in? By doing that? You can learn about different places that you can then go to be able to, you know, increase your network to build your support system up even more and to learn about new people, new events, new tools. Who are they learning from? And I like to say every guru has a guru that they learned from learning doesn't happen in a vacuum. It doesn't happen in a bubble. Everyone has someone that they can attribute a lot of their learning and their knowledge to so you can kind of follow the guru trail, you know? And then review your progress. And again, like how appropriate is this when we're talking about instructional design, especially within learning and development, you always want to evaluate, like, what has worked for you? What didn't work. And one of the things that I feel is important when you're giving and requesting feedback, and in this sense, you're doing like a self evaluation. What could you do better? What could you do more of what could you do less of, and I'll add another thing in there. What are you doing that is working, that is great. One way you can do this is just, you know, you can have a Google Doc, that you're putting the information, and you can have a notebook that you're writing things down, like today, you know, this week, I did this, you know, and you can kind of go back and you can do your own, like social media analysis, you know, you can, you can take a look and just find out, like, what worked or what was kind of a dud, and you like, Oh, I didn't like doing that, I'm not gonna do that again. And let's get to the EA, I think this is the one that I love the most enjoy. Going back to some of the things I said, don't do anything that you wouldn't want to do. If I tell you to post every day, and you post every day, and you don't like it, it's gonna show and you're gonna be unhappy, and you're not gonna like the Bella. So just just enjoy it. Have fun with networking. Folks can tell if your heart is not in it, I promise. And I have talked to so many people that have come to me about like, feeling like they don't know how to network. They're not bringing in an audience. They're not connecting with people. And I will ask them, like, what what have you been doing so far? Like, what's been your strategy? And they tell me, and I go look at their page. And the thing that most people tell me is that oh, so and so told me I have to post every day. And when I go look at their content, it's obvious. It's obvious. There's there's there's no feeling in it. There's no, there's no passion, there's no, I don't know, it just feels very sterile, cold. It feels static, not dynamic. And, you know, think of it this way. How often? How often do we continue to do something that isn't fun? I will use an amazing example that I think all of you can relate to dieting or exercise or anything related to our health. It's hard, right? Because most of us don't enjoy limiting our food choices. Me. Most of us don't want to take the extra time and energy to exercise. Me. Not all of us. There's a lot of people that do enjoy it. But you know, just just think about it. Anytime that you've had a task that you didn't want to do. Like, how often have you just kept up with it, even though it's not fun, most more than likely not very long.

celebrate your wins. Like, I can't express that enough like you did it. You rock. Now pay it forward, celebrate the wins of other people. Talk about your wins. There's nothing wrong with that. I know a lot of people don't want to talk about their accomplishments or their achievements or the you know, I did it. I did this moments, please do. I would love to see that. I get so excited when I can see others winning, succeeding being happy feeling that they belong. And I know a lot of other people in the l&d community would really really love to know everything that you do. I just lost my train of thought because I saw a wonderful comment in chat. She says I love the level of diversity in your choice of images throughout the presentation. Thank you Joelle. I appreciate that. i That's why I include inclusion in here because it's very important. We still have a predominantly sis hetero whitespace in learning and development. And it takes all of us to proactively jump in and be champions for diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, accessibility. And finally, be a cool human. Just just be a cool human so that you can bring fun to everyone so you can make other people enjoy you and enjoy networking. I want to share this. This is my buddy Jason. I'm not sure if the last name was Sanger. I didn't ask him Jason if you're here. I haven't been able to Pay attention to chat as much as I would like to Hey, Jason. And I did get Jason's permission to share it. So meet Jason. Connect with him, Jason, feel free to toss your, your website and or LinkedIn links in the chat so that folks can connect with you. Jason has been very, very active during this event. I think I've seen him from day one. He has been at the sessions learning. He's been at the tables, getting to know others asking questions, listening to others, and he has actively been seeking feedback and implementing it as well. As a result, I found out yesterday that Jason landed a new role thanks to his networking that he did at this, this conference. So this is not my success story. I'm not trying to own this, I just wanted to show the power of networking. And all of the good that can come from it. Literally, yesterday was Thursday again, and he already has landed a role. So never underestimate the power of connecting with people of building community building your support system. Developing your l&d squad, you know, I don't have a slide in here for this. But I have a lot of success in networking. And building my community, I would not have landed my role as a technical instructional designer at Pantheon had I not been networking, and actively meeting folks like Heidi Kirby, which is my boss. So I do attribute my networking and you know, community building to that. It's the same with my job as community and social media manager with Tim Slade, I don't think I would have ever gotten that job if I wasn't so heavily focused on networking and helping others and building community. And, you know, when I it's funny, because when within a month of me meeting Tim and being in his in his academy, I told myself, I want to be involved in this somehow, I want to be a part of this, I want I want to I want to play a bigger role in this. I didn't know how I didn't know when, but I just I tossed that out into the universe as woowoo as that might sound. And then, almost one year to the day that I had that that idea and I was in the academy is when Tim reached out to me and asked me to be the community and social media manager. And it you know, his reasoning was just because he's seen me network, he's seen me, you know, building community and stuff like that. So I definitely wouldn't have that role either if I wasn't, you know, mingling. So it is very powerful. There's power in, you know, connecting with folks. I love that Andrea says, These are the ideas and thoughts I've had all week because of this awesome conference. This conference has been so fast.

I love that Jason said this was a big leap for me to be in the spotlight. I love that, Jason, I'm proud of you for that. And I really appreciate you allowing me to tell a little bit of your story on here. And that is it gang. I want to thank you for I appreciate you taking time out of your day to spend some time with me. Whether you're watching live or watching via video after the event. I have some homework for you but only, only if it sounds fun to you. First of all, contact me anywhere you'd like. My link is in the resources section which on my screen looks like two documents with a folded page at the top of the chat. If it's not there, I can toss my Oh calian Thank you Kaylee and toss my link to my website. You can contact me anywhere you like but a tip would be start at my website and choose how you want to reach out to me. I have an email contact form there I have a lot of social media at the bottom. You do whatever you would like to do you connect with me however you'd like. And let me know how you plan to incorporate mingle into your networking plan. I just would love to learn and know like how how I can better support you if possible. And I just love to see like new ideas and fresh like perspectives on on networking. Final thought is sending so much love to all of you. Be cool, and be kind and you can find me online. You can find me at my name.com easy way to remember it's Bella with one L and for my last name I'm reclaiming the power of how I was teased as a kid Oh, she's gay and she has a tan well gang I did grow up to be queer and I have a little bit of a tan. So that's an easy way to remember it as well. On my last name, and then at my name at Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram medium. And then I have a shortened link here for my YouTube. And that is it, folks. I'm so excited to move my screens around here. And oh, I need to stop sharing. So I'm looking for that button. Uh huh. There found it. Thank you so much, so much love in the chat. I love it. You all are making me so happy.

Luis Malbas  
You're amazing. baileigh Oh, thank

Bela Gaytan  
you, I appreciate that I have so much fun. And I get excited sometimes and stumble over my words. But I'm I

Luis Malbas  
know, it's been great having you. You know, last event, this event I it's really a privilege getting to getting to know you through through the community and through all these activities. And I'm sure this is not the last time you're going to be up on this stage. So yeah, so I'm taking a look to see if there any, any questions or anything like in there. Nothing is coming up. I do want to mention, though, at nine o'clock, which this is not typical of the schedule, but we squeeze these in because the next session, Tom McDowell, and gamma are both from the UK. So timewise, we had to get this one in. Within, like, the schedule is basically a little different than normal. But there is one at nine o'clock hiring manager panel. Kara is going to be able to make it today. But her good friend and another TDC. Member, Joseph Suarez will be in there. So and of course, Heidi Kirby. So make sure you attend that next one. I do want to mention baileigh, when I was thinking about this is when you're networking, you're finding people, it's you know, there are some people out there that are not just they might not be standouts on LinkedIn or anything, but are absolutely brilliant when it comes to elearning instructional design, you know, so look for those people to you know, like, the first person that comes to my mind is Jonathan rock. I mean, he posts on LinkedIn, but I don't know, for my money. J Roc is one of the best storyline developers I've ever seen. But you'll you can find people like that too. And in a lot of times, those are the best people to make connections with.

Bela Gaytan  
Yeah, and another thing you can do is when you're reaching out to people, and again, remember everyone give and take, you know, after you've like, developed a conversation with someone, you've built rapport a little bit, ask them say, you know, if you had to refer me to some of the, you know, the big names that you think I could learn the most from, who would you recommend? And that's one way that you can find out about some of the folks that may not be on social media, and we don't hear about a lot, you know, but as you said, Luis like they are absolute gems and like treasures in the community.

Luis Malbas  
You will definitely find them out there. All right. Well, with that, I wouldn't mind just letting everybody have a bit of a break before the next one. Is that okay? baileigh.

Bela Gaytan  
Yes, definitely. And I'll be at tables as well today, if anybody wants to chat.

Luis Malbas  
Awesome. Okay. Excellent. All right. Thanks, Benji. All right. I'm gonna go ahead and close. Close the the session out and we'll see you in the next one. Um, tables will be open, I think, I think starting at 10 o'clock or so we've got a bunch today. And then of course, three more full sessions. I mean, yeah, three more full sessions. All right. See you guys next one. Bye. Bye.

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