
Preparing For A First Meeting With Me - peter123
http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2009/05/preparing-for-a-first-meeting-with-me.html
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brm
Like his stance or not, I have come to greatly appreciate people who don't
sugar coat things...

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RiderOfGiraffes
This is like the essay by EricRaymond and RickMoen:

<http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>

Perhaps a better version is this:

<http://www.mikeash.com/getting_answers.html>

The point is: if you're meeting someone, if you want someone to help you, if
you want _anything_ from someone - do your homework. If you don't make an
effort, or aren't seen to have made an effort, why should they bother to help
you?

This is especially true of people of whom many demands are made.

Make an effort - it's surprising how positively people will respond.

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joshu
A huge number of people are vague and unfocused. Especially in comparison to
some of the successful people he's worked with.

So this is not surprising to me. Most cold meetings are very bad. I've largely
stopped taking cold meetings because of it.

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bena
"Look I'm a really important and busy person. I don't have time to be nice.
Keep it short because I have a ton of meetings."

The only thing I don't see is why I should desire a meeting with this guy in
the first place. And whether or not his blog is good place to post
instructions on how to properly meet him. What about the proper protocol when
meeting me? What if his protocol and my protocol clash?

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ankhmoop
From the article: "Regardless of the outcome of a meeting, I view it as a
success if I learn one thing."

This is a phrase I've heard more than once from individuals who lack the
humility to appreciate that the meeting is also a success if they teach just
one thing.

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daeken
It has nothing to do with humility, but rather the value of your time.
Obviously, there's value to teaching, but when you're an investor doing random
short meetings, you're doing it to further your own business. If you help
someone out along the way (by investing in them or otherwise), that's a nice
addition but by no means the goal.

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pasbesoin
I found this interesting:

 _If our meeting isn’t going anywhere after ten minutes, you’ll notice a not
so subtle shift as I move into "shit, I’ve got five more minutes left -- I
better get something out of this meeting."_

So, if the meeting isn't succeeding, he gets antsy and tries to make something
out of it. That seems reasonably admirable to me.

As for the advice, I wish it could be communicated and applied generally. How
many meetings have I sat through where the participants spent the prior hour
or several browsing or socializing (open space environment)? They get into the
meeting, and the organizer spends 45 minutes of the hour lecturing to them
about the topic. If people had prepped, the meeting could be 15 minutes and
end with an informed decision, instead of being prelude to a subsequent
meeting wherein a decision may or may not be reached. Meeting organizers play
their part in this; all too often the agenda is mailed out 5 minutes before
the meeting. Like that's going to do any good. It's CYA and does not serve any
purpose of genuine communication.

I'm hesitating to post this, as my tone sounds somewhat negative. But it's
what I've observed, all too often.

I think it should be taken as a warning sign. In the best groups I've worked
in, people know what's going on and the meeting quickly moves on to what needs
to be done, or to sharing genuinely novel information -- usually newly
acquired and so not yet disseminated. If you encounter a lot of the scenario
described in the prior paragraph, start hunting for a new position. Even if
your current position is stable, it is likely to hold you back.

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zackattack
Something that my high school chemistry teacher once said to me (and I hated
him at the time, and did awful in his class, but learned TONS of life lessons
from him) is that the best way to meet with a teacher is to do as much
possible preparatory work ahead of time, in efforts not to waste his time.
Preparatory work: _specific_ list of questions you don't know answers to, for
example.

People are almost always willing to help if you do your prep work.

~~~
rgrieselhuber
Weird. I had almost the exact same experience with my chemistry teacher too.

~~~
derefr
I think high school chemistry is the closest the Western, public, pre-
university curriculum comes to actual, empirical _science_. It's the only
course I had in high school where we took doing experiments (and writing them
up) seriously. Geology and psychology were purely lecture-based, and physics
and biology were rooted more in demonstrations (because of a lack of
resources, I suppose) than student participation. Chemistry teachers,
therefore, are the most likely people in a high school to think in a rational,
investigatory mindset.

