Sharing personal information at social events
Today I went to a networking event for The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE). As I was driving to the event near the Univ of California Irvine, I thought about how many times I would have to explain how I left the company I co-founded after six months and what I was pursuing now. I was also wondering how many times others would have to repeat their story as they networked at the event.
What if there was a simple service on the web (a la Twitter) that allowed me to save a simple message that I would like to share with others at the event, and allowed others to retrieve that information through a cell phone text message call. I imagine I would use this if I were at an event where 12 people were waiting to talk to someone and I was really hoping to either meet the person or learn about him/her. What if on his name badge was the “Eventipedia” identifier that I could send in to a specific text message number and receive a message with information the person was wanting to share to inquiring individuals (e.g., bio, custom message for the event, etc).
I imagine that if a simple mechanism was created for individuals to share their identity and information about themselves to others at an event, it could be integrated with every event management system (e.g., Evite). For example, imagine entering your first name, last name, and Eventipedia ID. Your badge would show the number and others can inquire about you. You would be able to track who inquired about you and be able to then become friends with them on existing social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn.
This would increase the social connections that are made at events and make the process much more easier.
UPDATE 8/18/2007:
A relatively new company, nTag, just closed their $8.3M second round for electronic conference badges. I love the concept, but the fact that hardware is involved, it makes me slightly skeptical.
See the article at thealarmclock.com.
August 11th, 2007 at 5:03 am
Atul, love the idea for a blog…look forward to reading more.
I’m always interested in meeting new people at events and the bigger the event, the harder to meet the right people. You could extend it to have some sort of social network pre-meeting to understand who will be there.
There is an MIT spinoff that sells intelligent badges with an IR LEDs that transmt information about yourself to other badges. The badges have LED lights that shows you how close you are in profiles or other requirements. I think your idea is better since it requires no special hardware.
-Chandra
August 11th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Chandra, I’m glad you like the idea of this idea blog. There’s obviously many of these idea sites (I’ve linked to some on the right), but it will be great to start logging those I come across.
As far as the MIT spinoff, do you have the name? Also I agree with you that the cost of those types of advanced badges would be counter-intuitive to becoming a viral feature that many people would adopt. Loopt, Meetup, Phonester, Socializr, Dodgeball, and several other can be mashed up to bring social networking to meetings and pre-meetings. The key would be to bring real-time, at-the-moment social networking, potentially not only to meetings, but even campus orientations, corporations, etc. Maybe we can all wear a big sticker of our email address?
Look out for an email on the response to your Root Markets question.