Early morning today, at 1 AM in fact, I stayed awake to take part in the MIT Bootcamps Graduate Panel as a panellist. I spoke on the topic of “How to make the most of the Bootcamp community”. The full agenda was:

10 – 10:10 am ET → Introductions led by MIT Bootcamps team

10:10 - 10:25 am ET → Helena Franco, MMSc-GHD candidate at Harvard Medical School: how to adopt lessons learnt from the Bootcamp into your professional and personal life

10:25 - 10:40 am ET → Sharmin (Tinni) Choudhury, CTO of Kyco Australia: how to make the most of the Bootcamp community

10:40 - 10:55 am ET → Gareth Hewlett, Digital, Data & Network Convergence Director, Consumer CTIO at BT: how to think like a start-up for people used to working in a corporate environment

10:55 - 11:10 am ET → Giannina Gambini, Growth Manager Country at Tuxpas - Workplace from Facebook Partner: how to work with people from very different from yourself – whether it’s background, culture or personality

11:10 – 11:30 am ET → General Q&A (moderated by Bootcamps team)

I wasn’t as fluid with my speaking as I wanted to be and I feel I went for a bit too long. But I did cover the ground I wanted and encouraged the new MIT Bootcamp graduates to continue to say yes to opportunities to interact and participate with MIT Bootcamp community activities.

I truly believe that the power of “yes” is the way to get the most out of the MIT Bootcamp community. Whether that means saying yes to events, panels like the one this morning or just yes to organising something yourself, thus putting yourself out there and opening yourself to interaction and opportunities is the way to get the maximum benefit from the Bootcamp community.

To be fair, that’s the way to get the most out of any community but especially true of startup and research land I feel just because networking is so much more important within both. So go say yes to good, interesting opportunities from trusted sources. I have to qualify because I don’t want people to be so open that their brains fall out. There are way too many scams out there for me to encourage people to say yes without adding a word of caution. But still, do not doubt the power of yes!