I ran across a post at Matt Cutt's blog this morning that made me chuckle a little.  Apparently he found himself in a shuttle to work with 3 other people in the search industry:  himself, a guy from Windows Live, a guy from a search start-up, and a fourth grumpy, less-talkative guy.

It reminded me of something that I experienced along the same thread.

I was on vacation in "a beach town".  Since our hotel had no internet, I was sitting in a Starbucks doing some work on the computer.  Eventually, a group of several people came in, ordered coffee, and sat at the table next to me.  No big, right?  Well, they started talking… and talking… and talking.  For hours.  The topic of conversation was a major development project they were all working on in the area.  They discussed financing, development plans… the works.  Thing is, this big project was still a secret to the general public.  They hadn't announced anything yet.  I, of course, listened to the conversation.  Heck, I took notes while I was listening.  A few weeks later, the project was announced.

While the project didn't relate to my field of expertise specifically, it might have.  Those people had no idea what I did for a living.  What if I was a real estate developer?  What if I was an investor?  What if I worked for a company that might have been their eventual competition?

I could have made life difficult for those developers if I was in the right industry.  I could have went back to my employer and got something started to compete.  I could have had a major impact on their project.  They didn't know.  If Matt Cutts and his shuttle companions hadn't discovered their similar industry, the Windows Live guy could have told the start-up guy about something Microsoft was working on… that Google and a new company would then have the heads up on.

The moral of the story is this:  no matter where you are or what you're doing, you need to be careful about your topics of conversation.  Watch what you say, who you say it to, and who could potentially hear you.