I know the importance of business networking. Almost all the jobs I have had has been through my contacts rather than the traditional cold seek and resume applications. That does not mean I enjoy networking events. For the past ten years I have attended a whole suite of them;  AusBiotech, Women in Technology, Queensland State Government small business and technology incubation, etc, etc. But it has been over a year since I dropped out of the networking circuit and after seeing the presentation was my previous employer, I booked in for the Ausbiotech breakfast. Ignoring the fact that a breakfast event is a logistical nightmare (involved staying over my parents the night before, organising babysitters and then late for daycare and work), I really wanted to make the effort to cliché “keep my career alive.”

I wore my best dress. I collected my name badge. Entered the room. Surveyed the groups of suits and high heels. I no longer wear heels. Walked purposefully to the coffee. Poured my cup. Pretended to look busy. I hate these things. Thankfully found the speaker I was here to see to speak to her. Saved. I recognise at least a dozen regulars from my years of networking. However the approach to a group of people sipping tea and entering a conversation is not always a challenge but I get so pissed off when I think I have made the effort (especially when it is someone I have met many times before) but they just look you up and down, make small talk while scanning the room for someone more important to talk too.

Business Networking Challenge

Which brings me to a story of someone I met and was burnt by networking just when I was embarking on my career. To be continued…

Today is my last day in this house as we are moving. I am a little sad as I have packed up the girls bedroom and all our things. However I have quite enjoyed throwing out mountains of rubbish and donating bags of clothes and shoes that I no longer wear. I am ready to start a fresh. However the other night as I was working through my mountains of uni books I started to lament to N, “Oh I used to be important, I used to be smart… See all these books from all the degrees and meticulous plans from years in the workforce. All rubbish.” <insert me feeling a bit sad for myself> until N pulled me up,

“Lisa you are the most important person in the world to those two little girls upstairs.”

Damn right. Right now who really cares about the jobs, extra dollars and degrees. It is time to be a mum. Everything else can wait.

Tomorrow the removalist comes and from now we are living by the beach where I can spend more time being a mum and no more silly talk over rubbish.

You are the most important to me

As a regular blog segment I wanted to interview mums who have taken control of their career and started a business from home. As I juggle with childcare and full time work, my dream job would be to come up with a great idea or exploit a skill and be my own boss.

Although my degrees are science and technology, I doubt I will be coming up with a new invention or medical breakthrough (although if you have please contact me I would love to hear about it) anytime soon. I have met plenty of professional science and business entrepreneurs but the mum niche market is something different altogether. Over the series of interviews we will discuss challenges, tips and how mums around the world did it.

If you have a question to ask these mums please email me at lisad @ thelastdegree.com or if you would like to register you interest please go to my page “The Rise of the Mum Entrepreneurs.”

Last Friday a friend announced on facebook the launch of the Australian version of reality TV show, The Amazing Race. Applications are open for pairs of every day Aussies to work together competing against other teams in a race around the world. For fun, I downloaded the application forms and tested N to see if he would be interested. He is not so keen as who wants to have couples arguing on National TV (a lot of people apparently). Would we be a good couple to go on it? N is a good driver. Excellent driver so that is a bonus. Me; I am not too good with directions so I might let the co-pilot down.

One of the questions in the application form reads, “What is the weirdest thing about you?” I am stumped. What is weird, unusual, and odd about me? I can’t recall any unusual food or pastime cravings or fetishes. Maybe I am just un-interesting to go on TV. I do listen to Christmas carols all year round. Is that weird? Probably. But my arguement is if you ever feel a bit down just play a bit of Frosty the Snowman or Jingle Bell Rock and I am sure you will feel better. I suppose now I should announce my love of Christmas decorations. It started ten years ago when I worked in the Christmas department at Myers. When the internal job applications were opened to work as Santa’s Elf I jumped at the chance. At that time Christmas at Myers included the decorated Christmas cave, window and yearly themes. I attended Santa school where they trained all the Santa’s for the holidays. In Brisbane they had a city Christmas parade to launch the opening of the themed windows. Unfortunately I was not svelte enough for the ballerina costume and had to be content wearing the clown outfit handing out balloons.

Let’s just say Elf and Clown are no longer listed on my resume under Chlamydia expert.

Christmas 2009. Babies less than four weeks old. I promise never to dress them like this again.

Will keep you posted on our application.

“You’re the only person in the world who has a folder on your computer hard drive titled Chlamydia,” my sister once said.

Now to get the story straight almost ten years ago I spent a year studying the molecular evidence of Chlamydia affecting our Koala population. It was my graduate science Honours degree and during the project I carried the scientific motivation and fascination for discovering something new although most of the year involved silently trying to spell Chlamydia correctly and pronouncing the species name C.trachomatis without embarrassment.

Now my results are not ground breaking (although I recently searched for my own publication and it has been cited a few times since – Whoopee for bibliometrics) but I did discover and characterise novel uncultured Chlamydiales in Free-Range Koala Populations.

Although I no longer work in the laboratory, I have never been able to capture the same feeling of accomplishment as I did from that project.

What made this project different? Was it:

• The autonomy and problem solving,
• The opportunities to experiment with an idea,
• Having access to skilled and intelligent mentors,
• Strict deadlines which meant late night and weekends in the laboratory to try new experiments, theories and repeat results. Extra hours which for some reason I did not mind doing.
• The meticulous writing up of laboratory notes. Like a Vision diary creative expression is all in your laboratory books and lastly
• The satisfaction of having your results in print.

I often wonder if I should have continued with the curiosity that drives career scientists into a PhD and research. Instead I chose the commercial world. Today I wonder if I had continued on the research trajectory would I have been driven to discover something innovative and groundbreaking or even becoming an expert in my own niche of science and would it have been a more fulfilling career.

So what parts of that project I enjoyed most can I start to replicate again today?

On a final note, not to dampen my achievement in the paper “Molecular evidence for novel chlamydial infections in the koala (Devereaux etal Syst Appl Microbiol. 2003 Jun;26(2):245-53), can you see the different interpretation my father had as he would proudly report in public that his daughter “is named after new species of Chlamydia and had a publication to boot.”?