The *business* of software
QOTW: Have you ever been to a remarkable networking session at a conference?
If so, what was it? Or have you been to sessions that failed? And if so, why?
Here's the blog post this qotw refers to:
http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2009/01/bos-digest-how-do-you-ru...
$20 of Amazon voucher for the best answer. Post here ...
Here's the blog post this qotw refers to:
http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2009/01/bos-digest-how-do-you-ru...
$20 of Amazon voucher for the best answer. Post here ...
Views: 38
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Cliff McCollum on -
Have you considered running a "World Cafe"? It's a style of formalized group dialog that I discovered a couple years ago. I've participated in a few, and helped moderate a few, and they generally work out well. You can read more about the process at: http://www.theworldcafe.com/
The only challenge I see for BoS 2009 is that a World Cafe usually takes more than an hour to work well - though I've certainly run them in only an hour before.
You can read the web-site, but the general details - as I've used them - are as follows:
1. Setup a series of tables, with each table focused on a different topic. Hopefully the various topics aren't completely unrelated - though they can be.
2. Assign people to the tables at random.
3. Start the clock and ask the group to discuss their topic.
4. At the assigned time, have everyone from the table move to a new table *except* for a single person previously determined by the group. When the group moves to the next table, they can all move together, or they can randomly disperse. Depends on what you are trying to do. Nobody should move to the same table twice.
5. The person who stays at the table, greets the new discussion members. That person spends a few minutes summarizing the previous discussion for the next group. This summary often forms the seed of the new conversation, though not always.
6. Return to step 3. Repeat as many times as you have tables, or until you run out of time.
7. If you have time at the end, ask someone from each table to summarize the final discussion for the rest of the room.
Generally I try to make sure that whoever stays behind at a table during a rotation, does not stay behind at the next rotation. This keeps the conversations moving in interesting directions, and it keeps one person from being stuck on a single topic.
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Permalink Reply by Ken Hughes on -
Neil, somewhat off topic (in that it doesn't specifically answer the question), but some feedback/ideas on how to maximize the opportunity at BoS2009.
Prior to BoS2008 I posted a topic about meeting people who were interested in 'bootstrapping' during the breakout sessions. There were around 10 people interested and we agreed to meet up - the problem we had was the difficulty in finding one another (we did in the end)....
I was wondering if letting people suggest topics, picking the X most popular and designating areas during the breaks for each topic might help....
That way people can choose the topics they're interested in, amble over to that area during a break in the knowledge that everyone around there is interested in the same thing and just start chatting.
They can just as easily move on to the next area of interest, as they please.
Some of the discussions I had, that I thought would be pretty common were :
Bootstrapping
Hiring your first sales person (should I ??)
What to do about product marketing
What to do about product management
What do you think of my product, it's XXXXXX
.. Ken
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Permalink Reply by Matt Lacey on -
I've been very impressed with pathable.com.
Making it easy to find useful/appropriate/similar other people throughout an event, not just within a specific hour.
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Permalink Reply by Ed Loessi on -
Neil,
I attended an UnConference here in Boston http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2008/09/23/tech_...
The basic idea is that there is an overall theme such as technology/startups and that on the day people get to stand up and say I would like to talk about so and so. This then gets written up on a board so that people can see it and then people go to wherever that group is meeting etc.
What it did was let people be a bit spontaneous and feed of the knowledge of whoever was attending and what they knew about or what was interesting to them. It's sort of like immediate crowdsourcing e.g. here are a bunch of smart interesting people, so what can we share.
Maybe for BOS 2009 you could have a mini version of that same idea.
Ed Loessi
CEO
Faulkner Technologies
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Permalink Reply by David Locke on
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I know the technology adoption lifecycle. I want to work on the radical innovation side, rather than the commodity side of the lifecycle. The best networking event I've ever been to was one where a person working for a plumbing fixture company, as commodity as it gets, ask about how to overcome the commodity problem. So I looked into it. At first, I found technology. Then, I found marketing touchpoints. And, lastly, I found business practices. If I had not met this person, and tried to help, I wouldn't really know the technology adoption lifecycle the way I know it today.
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Permalink Reply by David Locke on
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Most networkers do not know how to network. So if you want to structure a networking event, use a form that lays out the basic issues like contact info, who they are, what they need, what did we talk about, and lastly, follow up.
Break up the cliques as well.
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Permalink Reply by Steve Jones on -
I'll add a couple ideas here. One, dedicate time on both days and keep the music down at the social event so we can hear each other talk.
On networking, one thing I'd suggest to help people after the conference is print up small cards with people's information on it, but encoded in a bar code, except for their name. Their email, phone, twitter, etc. is all hidden. Then let people exchange these throughout the conference. When it's time to leave, everyone can hand in the cards of those that want to keep in touch with. If you get a match (i.e. I hand in Neil's card, he hands in mine), you send them each the relevant info.
For the conference itself, I liked the idea of tables, but speed up the discussions so people can touch base, but not get too caught up. Perhaps label tables at breakfast, lunch, and one session during the day with numbers. Then broadcast on Twitter, with a search term like #BoS, Table 1 is bootstrapping. Table 2 is Neil's decision to build a new office, etc. Let people "mob" to those tables. If they're large, than perhap have a moderator at another table tackle a similar subject and re-tweet it to people.
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Permalink Reply by Mark Dalgarno on -
Steve Jones said:On networking, one thing I'd suggest to help people after the conference is print up small cards with people's information on it, but encoded in a bar code, except for their name. Their email, phone, twitter, etc. is all hidden. Then let people exchange these throughout the conference. When it's time to leave, everyone can hand in the cards of those that want to keep in touch with. If you get a match (i.e. I hand in Neil's card, he hands in mine), you send them each the relevant info.
We use a slightly lower-tech variant of this for the SPA conference. Everyone fills in a card with their name/photo on it when they arrive. They can include as much contact information as they like on this card and they also list what they're interested in speaking to others about. All cards get put on a poster board so that everyone can see what everyone else is interested in. You can then leave messages - either on people's cards using post-it notes or with the registration desk - for people you'd like to meet with, or just take their contact details for use after the event.
We're able to prefill most of the cards from data people have already supplied ahead of the event so this keeps the admin down. The same could be done using the BoS network data I guess...
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Permalink Reply by Mark Dalgarno on
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Cliff McCollum said:Have you considered running a "World Cafe"? It's a style of formalized group dialog that I discovered a couple years ago. I've participated in a few, and helped moderate a few, and they generally work out well. You can read more about the process at: http://www.theworldcafe.com/.
We ran something similar at Code Generation 2007. But instead of having tables set up we set up 10 or so flip charts around the room with predefined headings like 'people', 'process', 'technology' etc. We then let people wander around the room for 20 or so minutes adding questions / comments on the various flipcharts. After this we had facilitators spend 20 minutes or so discussing the questions / comments on some of the flipcharts with the people who were interested in that specific topic. This discussion process was then repeated for the next set of flipcharts until all flipcharts had been discussed.
Some of the flipcharts were 'seeded' at the start of the session with questions that had been collated in advance of the session through a conference 'wall'.
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Permalink Reply by Bob Cramblitt on -
Great suggestions, but some sound like a lot of work for people who are attending sessions, trying to keep up with their jobs, staying in touch with home, etc. The best networking session I ever attended happened recently at a Holiday party for a recently opened bar. People were introduced to one another by the owners and bar tenders, one of whom had a connection to every attendee and knew his or her interests. It led to natural conversations and new relationships.
I like wearing a card where on the left you have business interests: hiring, social marketing, product pricing, etc. and on the right other interests: guitar, hiking, art, etc. These could be made up in advance via web sign-up. It's uncanny how often social interests lead to common business philosophies or interests. Good food and drink will normally take care of the rest. I would lose the games that you had last year, as that distracts from one-on-one contact and conversation.
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Permalink Reply by Erietta Sapounakis on -
By far the best networking tool I have experienced was at webDU in Sydney 2008 where a trading card game was organised. Each delegate was given a few cards to begin with when they arrived. The cards featured cartoon portraits of the speakers; attendees had to approach speakers to get their cards and swap with other delegates. It broke down the barriers between attendees and speakers as well as encouraging attendees to interact with each other. The game rules and cards were beautifully designed by the flash and game designers Nectarine. On the last day of the conference everyone waited around to see who won, so the interest was maintained right up until the end. The game created a lot of buzz during the whole event. Sweet stuff.
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Permalink Reply by Mark Dalgarno on
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One more thought Neil, it might be worth asking about this on the Conference Organisers Network.
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