I've done a lot of talking about the Energy Rodeo over the past few weeks and months, I figure you guys can handle a few more posts. Today, I will expand on the ideas explored in this post and give you guys an insider's look of what happens when screen names and avatars are replaced with real faces and personalities.

My arrival in Houston was greeted with all the factors folks from Down South consider daily, but a life long Yank like myself equates with a dream or (given the copious amount of liquor consumed this weekend)...a hallucination.

A beautiful older lady waiting for her cab wanted to know why I looked so serious and angry. Though I was joking, there was a little truth sprinkled into my response:

"Everybody smiles and says "hi". It's weird.

Her response gave me a good laugh, but also something to think about.

Lemme guess, sugar...New York City, by way of Chicago or perhaps D.C?

Guess I'm easier to read when the mask is off...

When People Stop Being Monkeys and Start Going Apeshit

At this point I must disappoint some readers and bring relief to more than one Energy Rodeo attendee...

There will not be any direct references to our fellow monkeys. Maybe a quote or two, but identities will be concealed to protect the guilty. You will get a step-by-step guide to my own shenanigans and tomfoolery, but that is all.

The first and foremost issue that jumps out is how things change when you put a face with a name. We sit at our screens, reading each other's comments but never really connect.

Once those words are attached to a face, once that face has a voice, once that voice cracks at the sheer excitement of a $1 taco dripping with pork juice and the smoking polite waitress that brought it...

The world can never be the same.

The Real Lessons of Riding at the Rodeo

The purpose of the previous paragraph is to get you guys into the thought process of relationship building. Think about how relationships evolve and change.

From that first day you pick out a name in the alumni directory to stalk, to the informational interviews, the coffees, the interviews and eventual hires...it is all a relationship.

Think about this if you're an employed monkey climbing the vine to the tree top:

Your co-workers, your boss, the client. They all become someone else once the ties get loosened and the suits are replaced by tees and jeans.

That is what happened this past weekend in Houston. I got to meet guys whose comments I have read for years (in some cases). I got to see that they were real people, with their own little bugs and quirks.

I have learned a new level of respect for these men and now consider them friends and not just characters or random voices and titles.

Though this event (for me personally) was not about getting a job, making connections, learning about the energy industry, etc...

I did learn something important about the evolution of human relationships and exactly why it is so damn important...

To just smile and say "hi".

Had I not chosen to do that by writing for WSO, I wouldn't have had the blast of the past few days.

I wish all of my new comrades at arms the best and hope to see them next year when I know the Energy Rodeo will be far bigger than the cozy intimate affair it was this past weekend.

TOMORROW: the dirty, sordid laundry begins to fall on the floor...