Professional Networking at Virtual Conferences: How to Connect Online

What Is Professional Networking, Anyway?

Having a strong network of fellow developers is a valuable tool. It can help you keep up to date with industry trends, assist you with hard-to-solve problems and provide career guidance and support.

Careers in software development are dynamic: programming languages mature and sometimes get replaced, SDKs change routinely and best practices evolve. One of the best ways to keep tabs on and sift through all of this information is to have a strong network of peers. You don’t have time to dive into everything new, but if you have a strong enough network, you’ll have a connection to someone with experience on any given topic.

Sometimes even Google can’t help you solve an issue. That’s when you need a professional network. Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash.

Your network consists of the people you go to when you’re stuck on a problem that even Stack Overflow and hours of debugging can’t solve. They’re also there to give you career advice, because they know you and they’ve experienced similar things. And when you’re feeling frustrated or doubting yourself, they’re there to lift you up.

And of course, these are the people who will provide job referrals and keep their ear to the ground when you’re looking for work. According to Payscale, up to 85% of open positions are filled by networking. Even if you’re not looking for a job now, having a strong network is invaluable when that time comes.

Keep in mind, however, that your network is most effective when you’ve established a history of all of these other types of support. If you seem too self-serving, it will be a turnoff for other devs.

Instead, build your network to be part of a community and make some friends with common interests. Be sure to be a good member of the community and give help and advice as often as you seek it. Your support structure will become stronger with time.

With the developer community more physically isolated than before, networking is even more vital to your success and well-being. At the same time, the methods of growing and maintaining a network have changed. Next, you’ll learn how virtual conferences fit into these new ways of networking.

How Virtual Conferences Foster Connection

In-person conferences are hard to beat for building personal connections. A lot of people with shared interests come together in one location where there’s downtime for discussion between talks and plenty of opportunities for meetups. Striking up personal conversations is natural in these situations.

Natasha Murashev, iOS developer and founder of the try! Swift Conference, said: “The online experience just cannot replace the in-person feeling of the community coming together in the same city, meeting the local developers, and singing karaoke together. This type of experience forms deep long-term bonds, so it is ideal.”

However, virtual conferences are using creative methods to introduce similar opportunities. try! Swift World, the weekly virtual workshop version of the conference, has done a great job at this.

Change up your screen name to share more about yourself in a virtual conference. Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash.

Natasha continued: “At try! Swift World, we try as hard as possible to connect the workshop attendees by having an ice breaker at the beginning of the event so attendees can see everyone and interact together in a fun way. We also encourage everyone to turn on their cameras so it feels personal and to change their Zoom name to include their location to make it feel more ‘worldly’.”

Workshops or talks with smaller live audiences often dip into a conversational format. A conversation with others interested in similar topics is a great jumping-off point for further connection. If you connect with someone during a discussion, be sure to pick up the conversation again outside of the conference and stay in touch.

For larger talks, discussion usually takes place in text chats, either within a chat tied to the stream or via a separate avenue like Slack. Presenters usually take questions from the chat, which encourages audience participation and gives you a chance to hear from fellow attendees.

Speak up when you can add value in a conference talk chat. Make note of attendees you’d like to follow up with later, including their contact details. You may need to search for those details on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Organizers typically sprinkle social opportunities between talks. Some examples are breakout rooms with small groups, happy hours or games. These events are a great place to find others interested in networking.

You’ll learn some ways to make the most of these social opportunities below.

Essentials of Successful Networking

Here are some vital guidelines to set yourself up for successful networking at virtual conferences:

• Turn on your camera on: Seeing the faces of the people you’re speaking with provides a stronger connection, while also allowing more cues to prevent speaking over one another.
• Speak up: In virtual conferences, you may have to push yourself outside your comfort zone by speaking to a larger group. But whenever you have the chance to introduce yourself, take advantage of this time to make an impression. This might be by plugging your skill set or mentioning your favorite pet projects — or even mentioning you’re looking for work.
• Tell people how to reach you: Consider putting your social media handle next to your name on video conference software. If you’re speaking, direct people to the best place to reach you with questions.
• Take notes: When you have a good exchange with someone or discover they’re working on something interesting, be sure to grab their contact information and jot down some notes on what you talked about. This makes it easy to follow up with them meaningfully.

Put in the Work to Build Your Professional Network

To make connections virtually, you need to put in the work. While it might be tempting to attend talks at an event and then sign off, skipping the ice breakers and happy hours, you’d miss out on those invaluable networking opportunities.

Malin Sundberg, an independent iOS developer and frequent conference speaker, described networking opportunities at iOS Conf SG 2021: “They did a really good job engaging the audience. They had a quiz at the beginning of the day and another after lunch with prizes to keep people’s energy up. The conference also had a live chat for everyone to be able to engage. I do find many conferences have adopted that and are trying to continue the conversation after the talk is done.”

These networking sessions give you the opportunity to learn about other attendees and let you share something about yourself. But learning what you have in common is only the first step in making a connection.

In the next section, you’ll get some ideas on how to move beyond this initial connection and build something lasting.