You’re at a party. You’re standing with your drink and small foods in your hands. You’re glancing around the room when suddenly you see someone you recognize vaguely from that other thing you both attended a few months ago. They come over to talk to you. You chat about the things you have in common. You leave the conversation and move on to something else, but that brief moment of connection cements that particular person, out of the hundred or so that were there that night, in your memory. A few weeks later, you see a news story that reminds you of the conversation you had with that person at that party. You send them a link through Facebook and ask them for their thoughts. The relationship continues from there.
If that conversation happened to be about work, then you’re networking.
