Professional Development Committee

On March 18, Professional Development Committee (PDC) of San Diego Section of the ACS conducted their first 2009 series of seminar in Networking Skills at Morrison & Foerster. MoFo sponsored a seminar room and accessories (laptop, microphones, tables for event sign-up and dinner etc). Thirty-nine of the sixty pre-registrants attended this event. The seminar speakers were

Zhu Shen, PhD., CEO. BioForesight

Victoria Tucker, Managing Director, ZeroBoundary, Inc

Peggy Wallace, Founder Making Conversation

After a brief introduction and welcome speech by Mohan Thiruvazhi (Member-at-Large and Co-Chair of PDC, ACS), Michael Smith introduced the audience to MoFO and its practices. The first speaker of the evening, Zhu Shen, introduced Networking to the audience and took them to the concept of Cold Calling by providing her experiences as examples. Then, she spoke about modern Networking opportunities such as LinkedIn and shared her methods and successes in Networking. Her talk also summarized many local networking events for the benefit of the audience.

Next, Peggy Wallace, educated the audience on Nuts and Bolts of conversations. She was vibrant in her presentation and provided tips on how to navigate a room of participants in a networking event and the etiquettes to follow. She also shed light on e-mail follow-ups and had tips for job hunters.

The final speaker, Victoria Tucker, spoke about generational challenges to utilization of available networking tools, newer aspects of social media, emerging trends of networking in workplace etc. Her unique presentation style kept the audience attention throughout her speech that evening.

After the presentation, the floor was opened to a vivid discussion/Q&A session followed by conclusion of the event. This was a successful and timely event in the midst of challenging economic and employment situations. The audience benefited from this PDC organized Seminar on Networking Skill.

Organizers: Mingzhu Zhang (Chair, PDC, San Diego ACS) and Mohan Thiruvazhi (Co-chair, San Diego ACS).

Find a copy of Peggy Wallace’s presentation HERE