Over the past few years I’ve struggled to find colleagues with the right balance of common-interest, personal connection, and willingness to spend out-of-school time nerding out. I made a point of reaching out to a few of my new buddies and we had quite the adventure this past week. The four of us planned what we called a Nerd Adventure. This was our itinerary:
- 9:00 am – Meet to carpool
- 9:30-10:00 – Check out a cool electronics surplus store called Murphy’s in El Cajon.
- 10:30 – 11:30 – Check out a huge general surplus store in National City called K-Surplus (where I won our “best find for $5” competition).
- 11:30 – 1:00 – Awesome sushi.
- 1:30 – 2:30 – A tour of a local manufacturing facility where they make miniature machine tools called Sherline up in Vista.
- 2:30 – 3:00 – We checked out the Craftsmanship Museum, in Carlsbad.
- 3:00 – 4:00 – After making friends with our tour guide at the Factory and Museum, she took us to check out some of her personal projects. Whoa.
We had a great time, shared lots of ideas, and are currently brainstorming for our next adventure. This is what all professional development should be like – building relationships, sharing ideas, learning together, and having fun.