2/17 Feb Morning Mtg

TLA February 17th Meeting Announcement

Technology Leaders Association (TLA) was established in 2002 to help senior level IT executives develop and manage their careers. As part of this effort, we hold monthly meetings to network, share ideas, and learn from featured guest speakers in the strategy, information technology, and career management fields.

For February and in preparation for the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day, our speaker will be Conor Cunneen.

His presentation on SHEIFGAB the World – Eight Building Blocks to Successful Transition will have you laughing, learning and thinking and will definitely help you in your job search.

Check Conor’s website www.IrishmanSpeaks.com . “It is fun and interesting.”

Date: Friday, February 17th
Where: Acxiom, located at 3333 Finley Road in Downers Grove (8 story building)
Cost: No charge

Special thanks to TLA member and Acxiom employee John Costanza for hosting us this month.

As a special facilities note, all TLA members must be escorted throughout the Acxiom facility. Please do not leave the conference room without an escort.

For reservations, (1) Please sign up online on the TLA website (www.techleaders.net) under ‘Events’ – or, if you don’t have access to the website, (2) Please reply to Patrick.Moroney@gmail.com with your name and telephone number.

For location information: Contact Jim Anfield at jdanfield@illinoisalumni.org.

Reservations must be made before noon on Thursday, February 16th with the first 80 reservations accepted. No walk-ins please.

If you have reserved and are unable to attend, please send a note to Pat Moroney.

Directions
Acxiom is located near the intersection of I-355 and I-88 in Downers Grove. Get off the Butterfield Road exit of I-355 and go east to Finley Road. Go south on Finley Road for about a half-mile and Acxiom is located on the east side of Finley. Go to the main entrance of the eight-story building for check-in. Do not go to the other four-story Acxiom building. Parking is available just west of the eight-story building in the parking lot.

Agenda
7:00am – 7:15am Check-in and coffee
7:15am – 8:30am Structured networking – two table rounds
8:30am – 8:40am Announcements
8:40am – 9:30am Conor Cunneen
9:30am Adjourn

Structured Networking
Structured networking is a technique used at most major executive transition groups. It is meant to be a powerful method of generating ideas that might help each of our searches. During this process, we will quickly brainstorm potential job lead ideas, gain networking contacts at desired companies, and generate advice from the members by sharing our backgrounds as well as our career objectives. It is designed to generate ideas, but given the time constraints, not get into immediate detailed discussions. You should plan on following up with anybody who may have had an interesting idea or a good contact.
Please bring business cards, handbills (career overview) or resumes (plain paper is fine) to pass around if you have them. Figure on about 20 copies of the resumes/handbills and 50 business cards.
We will run our networking, dividing the room into small tables of a maximum of 8 people and doing 2 table rotations before our speaker begins. At each rotation, you will have 90 seconds for your pitch and about 90 seconds for Q&A. Spend no more than 1/3 summarizing your past (this is not the time to rehash your resume), then spend about 1/3 on what you are looking for and 1/3 on what we can do to help (such as target contacts) or ask for advice on an issue.

Speaker Bio
Conor is an Irishman, happily exiled in Naperville where he says the Guinness is drinkable and the natives are friendly! He is also a person who has a deep passion for those in transition. He has co-hosted JobTalk on Chicago radio for five years, and has spoken to thousands on the transition process.

Cunneen’s ebullient, down to earth communication style has been likened to “James Joyce meets Tom Peters,” and “He’s like an Irish Dilbert.” His business skills were honed in Ireland, UK and USA where he was VP Marketing, Unilever. Once you hear him, you will not be surprised to learn that Conor Cunneen is a winner of Chicago Toastmasters Humorous Speaker of the Year and author of SHEIFGAB the World – Eight Building Blocks to Successful Transition