House Full of Relatives is Like a Giant Networking Event

Whew! All is quiet on the Peters/Cotner front. This past weekend we had 15 people including Steve and me at our house to celebrate summer and an early 4th of July. After everyone left on Sunday afternoon, I realized how much this had been like a giant networking event and how I did not prepare for such an event.

Oh, don't get me wrong. The house was somewhat clean -- or as clean as it can be with three dogs and three cats.

There was plenty of food -- actually more than enough for a week.

There were almost enough beds -- I slept out in the tent with my granddaughter two nights.

There were even some fireworks -- my son, Andy, has always been a pyro-maniac.

We swam in the pond and played with the canoe and kayak. Part of the fun was called "sink the canoe."

What I didn't prepare for was a method to continue to get to know these relatives better. I know all the tricks -- set a goal, use open-ended questions, find out commonality, and even what they are hoping to accomplish. And if I were heading out for a Chamber business networking event, I would certainly have at least thought about all this. Probably this whole gang won't all get together here until our annual Greek/Polish/Japanese/American Christmas. I hope that I find out stuff then that I didn't this past weekend.

What did you do this past weekend? In the future will you change what you did?