Matchmaking and meetings
We’re starting to see more of the meeting “matchmaking” programs, where you go to a Web site, fill in your interests and areas of expertise, and have a way to find ahead of time those who you might want to connect with face to face. I’ve taken one of these for a demo ride and absolutely loved it. But then I read this post by Kevin Holland at Association Inc., and he’s not too wild on the concept. His main objections are:
- 1. Since these are all associations Iâve belonged to for quite some time, why do I have to tell them what my interests are? Why donât they already know what my interests are?
2. What am I supposed to do with a list of attendees?
3. Just because someone may have the same interests as me doesnât mean they have anything useful to teach me. That probably sounds harsher than I mean it. What I mean is, how useful is a list of peopleâs interests/issues without any context? There are lots of things Iâm interested in that I donât know anything about. There are a few other things Iâm interested in that Iâve got a lot of experience in. The same is true of everybody else.
As to #1, yeah, they should know at least your professional interests. But if they don’t, here’s their chance to make good on the oversight. One would hope that, once you fill the thing out, it goes into their files so they can target their marketing for future programs to stuff you’re mostly likely to be interested in, at the very least.
#2: Get in touch with them. Now that you know they at least have some common interests, why not try to get a bunch of like-minded folks together for coffee or drinks, or grab a lunch table together?
#3: Associations should include “I have lots of experience with X” and “I’d like to learn more about Y” in the fields to be filled out. I think this option is available in most of these programs.
And Kevin makes a great point later on in his post about how, since associations are by nature in the relationship/community-building business, this shouldn’t just be for an event, but should be ongoing. Agreed. While it’s great to use as a short-term tool to meet people at a conference, it also could be a way to network all year long. If the network is always waiting for you, it should be fairly easy to find someone to help when you run into a specific professional snag, or at least give you a place to start.
February 2nd, 2006 at 1:48 pm
It also takes quite a lot if time and effort to create your online network–I mean, a real one, not just a list of contacts. And it takes effort and time to maintain it. So it’s not something you want to start fresh all the time for every conference. At least, I wouldn’t want to! I don’t want to have to find “my people” and connect with them all over again at each conference via the software, which could easily change from conference to conference.
What would be great is if I could provide the networking software with a list of people in my network (who have given me prior permission to “search” for them) and let the software connect me immediately to them. That way, my network could flourish and grow elsewhere, but I could pack it up and take it, or part of it, “on the road”, as it were. I could just take the medical association people to the medical meeting online network, the meeting planner contacts to the MPI meeting’s online network, etc etc.
Leave a Comment