Can You Understand Something You Haven’t Experienced?

I recently went to downtown Dallas to volunteer for and attend some of the Dallas StartUp Week sessions. This event is pretty exciting for our local community. I expect great things for the upcoming years’ events.

So in my adventure into Big D, I realized that I hadn’t been downtown in sometime. Yes, embarrassingly enough I have become quite comfy in my suburban environment.

To make a long story short. My trek to downtown resulted in:

• A visit to several parking lots and garages trying to find a parking spot – Why didn’t I take DART?
• A LONG walk down a meandering walkway to the building I was heading to.
• A realization that I wore the wrong shoes. I guess I had suburban shoes on.
• A complete understanding that I NEEDED to get back here more often. I had forgotten how awesome it is. The energy, the community, the collaboration. Even more so with places like Fort Work and The DEC pulling this community together and turning out great things.

This concept got me thinking about a debate going on at Witmer Group right now. We often engage in discussions that question how and what we do. We find it keeps us from getting too set in our ways.

The questions at play:

• Can our clients businesses benefit from the use of social media if they as individuals don’t understand it themselves?
• Can our clients understand the power of social media if they don’t use it?

I’m not ready to commit to the answer yet as the debate is still ongoing. But I will say this.

• I had forgotten why downtown Dallas is so important to the business community.
• I had forgotten how to navigate myself downtown.

We will continue to strive to educate our clients on the why’s and how’s of social. And this debate will continue. But for me, I will spend more time downtown. Just so I don’t forget how to embrace all that it has to offer.

I hope you have a chance to visit the Dallas StartUp event this year. If not, put it on your list for 2016. See you then!