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Pondspectives with Mike

Pond, Water Garden Networking at Industry Events

By Mike Garcia

No matter your profession, networking with like-minded individuals involved in the same line of work proves invaluable, especially if you can network with people from multiple geographic locations. The pond and water garden world held a few industry-wide professional events in the past.

Because this year witnessed the worst economic challenge to our economy in many decades, many industry-wide related events were cancelled. Pondapalooza represented the biggest pond world event held in different locations each year and providing a networking Mecca to pond and water garden builders, distributors and manufacturers. This year, Pondapalooza was cancelled.

InfoTanza, an industry-wide professional event put on by International Professional Pond Contractors Association, represented the only industry-wide event for pond and water garden builders in 2009. Held in October, InfoTanza grew more than 50 percent in size.

InfoTanza represented 17 manufacturers, with about 60 top-tier pond and water garden contractors attending. This offered a great opportunity for pond and water garden professionals to network.

The benefits of this type of networking include:

• talking about problems you both face
• making contacts for future sales
• referring business out of your area to someone you met
• seeing the latest innovations from manufacturers
• speaking with prospective buyers
• developing friendships, which proves important because people often buy from those they trust.

Hopefully, 2010 will see more pond and water garden industry support for professional events. What would you like to see at such events? Should the cost of event attendance be included in association membership dues?

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