A bit of a silly title, but an interesting story. A few weeks back I posted a note about attending TechEd and how popcorn seemed to be a big hit when it was served one afternoon. Last week following the oPASS meeting one of our regulars – Bob Blaydes – asked if I’d like to have popcorn at SQLSaturday #49 this fall. Sure, of course! But what led to this fortuitous question? Turns out he had read the blog post and happened to own a professional quality popcorn machine.

It’s a small win, yet it’s a big win too. Here’s a case of my network working for me, and vice versa. Bob would have volunteered regardless to help out for #49, but now he gets to make a greater contribution for the same effort. We get popcorn at cost, and we’ll try to subsidize that by selling a ‘popcorn sponsorship’ complete with vendor logo on the popcorn bags!

It’s also a lesson to me that I still don’t always know how/when to use my network to best effect.I don’t think it would have been appropriate to send an email to my networking asking ‘do you know anyone that owns a popcorn machine?’, yet I could have mentioned it on the oPASS/SQLSaturday sites at the least. It’s a long shot that it works, yet it’s relatively cheap to ask. It’s also a good case for expanding your network, to increase the chances of finding that one connection.