So, tell me something about yourself
So I recently sat on a panel for one of those industry conference things. These events are sometimes useful in prompting fresh thoughts, but more often, as a venue for meet-ups and catch-ups. To compensate for my being a non-natural networker, I try to maintain the discipline of turning up from time to time. About 10 minutes before we were slated to go on stage, the moderator gave the panelists a heads up that, before diving into the substantive topic at hand, he would break the ice by asking us to share something personal about ourselves. The look of sudden panic on the panelists' faces was, at once, both funny and little bit sad. On one hand, these are experts who can ad lib without notes for a good hour on complex, diverse topics. On the other hand, these same articulate experts are all spooked for something, anything (!) to say about themselves as actual people. I imagine it went something like "MiFID 2? Brexit? FATCA? FCPA? No problem. Oh, my personal lif