MINGLING ON THE BEACH

"Where have you been Matt?" asked my colleague. We were standing on the beach, clutching pint glasses and I'd just rejoined the circle of fellow employees on the sand. This was how the first day of the conference ended. Lights twinkled across the bay. The waves gently folded in on the shore behind us.

"I've been trying to mingle," I said, carefully. It has always astonished me that a group of people who know each other really well almost always refuse to integrate with other people if they have each other to lean on. Nothing could have been truer of my colleagues huddled together, away from the crowd of other conference delegates who were chatting and swarming across the sand. I think it might be an engineering thing. We subconsciously calculate the most efficient way to meet our social needs, exercising the lowest risk with the highest potential, and we stick together. I doubt a sales conference would be so insular.

I actually can't stand mingling. It's the single most awkward and difficult thing to do and whenever I'm in a situation where it's required, I feel terrible. The choice is stark: hang around on the edges of other people's conversations, listening like you're an unseen outsider, running the terrible risk of being rejected, ostracised or dismissed... or wander around like a lonely cloud, hoping that someone will be kind enough to talk to you. I hate both of these options.

I felt that rejection way back in the Freshers' Week of 1996, when I arrived at university. I tried to join a conversation but didn't have the insight to realise that the guy I interrupted was actually trying to hit on the girl he was talking to. He decided he was going to take me down before I became his competition. He eviscerated me with scowls and conceited humour. It was all rather animalistic I suppose, but in the end I simply walked off, taking it all very personally. It was only later that I realised and hoped she'd see through it and wander off too.

So tonight, faced with the choice of overcoming my fear of mingling, or hanging around the whole time with people I see every week, I chose to give mingling a good old go. I had a chat with a guy from Redruth whose office is in London but works from home. He seemed very chilled. Then I had a conversation with a lady I'd seen in one of the sessions. She seemed to be very much in control of every situation she faced, including the conversation. Eventually she got a bit bored and went off in search of white wine.

If I had been braver I would have gone up to one of the guys who'd been wearing outback hats indoors and I'd have said: "Hey, I like your hat," but I guessed people like that thrive in their own zany eccentricity. I didn't want to fuel that fire. I simply added them to my list of stereotyped software guys.

Also added to that list of course, was the comic book guy who took one of the sessions today. You know the type: tall, bulky, pony tail, Hawaiian shirt, loud, incredibly victorian sideburns that almost met at the chin, desperate for us to think he's a bit sweary but suspiciously posh-voiced with a hint of sarcasm. His session was brilliant.

Then there was the pernickity guy with lego-man hair and glasses, who seemed to love telling people off. I felt a bit sorry for him actually because I suspect I wasn't the only person to find it a bit grating. I imagined his name was Colin and that he loved spending his weekends building perfect model trains his children would never be allowed to touch. People like that tend to be exceptional engineers, though hard to handle at times. I didn't chat to 'Colin' in my mingle-challenge, but I did wonder whether I'd have a strategy for a good conversation if given the chance. I suspect I'd mostly listen and try hard not to test his patience.

"Mingling eh?" said my colleauge, half-impressed, half-terrified. He might not have been able to see in the twilight, that that was exactly how I felt about it too.