Conferences or “would you like to stay in touch with me?”
Staying in contact after conferences or even depending the contacts – how do you handle the newly found more or less interesting persons you just met and / or got some business cards from?
I don’t know the English equivalent I just used in the German posting for “Willst Du mit mir geh’n” but it is somewhat like what a teenager asks the opposite sex if they should be together. It is mainly a little childish, shy question and in case of teenagers will mostly last for about a week or so. But back to the topic.
Running around the DLD in Munich I met quite a bunch of people and some people met me. With some i exchanged business cards, some just had a smaller chitchat and some deeper, more interesting conversations.
How do you handle those contacts after conferences? I hesitate to add those “just exchanged some words” people to my list of contacts in systems like openbc or LinkedIn – why should I if I don’t plan on staying in contact with them?
On the other side there are some of those persons I met, with whom I would really like to have more contact / exchange – but for example don’t have a blog. Yes, some people are still interesting even if they don’t have a blog. Although it reduces the appeal of that person immensely. ;)
How usual is it in your cultural surrounding to just add those contacts? And how would you feel if you would receive an email from me saying “we somehow met at this conference, and I would like to stay in contact through those different available systems. See the following links for systems like openbc / LinkedIn / skype / flickr / … if you are available on these, I would love to stay in contact with you, please feel free to add me!”?
Is this okay for you or would you feel inclined to add me if I would sent you such? Or would you be more disappointed if it would be obvious, that it was send to more than just one person – do you require an all personal approach on these topics? :o)
I am not only asking this to get a feeling for myself how to act in this case, but also because it occurred to me, that cultural circles may differ in this.
cultural differences, openbc, LinkedIn, dld06
Tags: conference, european view
You read my mind – how did you do it ?
This is a topic the conference org team (steffi ?) should take care of: they should develop an interactive attandee list with link to what the attendee wants to offer, his/her blog, openbc or what so ever contact page. But it is always easier to hold a conference about social software than really using it in daily business.
regards
thomas
You mean – like a wiki for the participants? ;))
indeed – WIKI or something similar.
On the other hand – maybe that is scary too for the guests? We should make little “wiki help yourself” corners for them. ;)
In answer to your question “How usual is it in your cultural surrounding to just add those contacts?” — I always add people who I meet to my Outlook contact list, then once a week I export the new contacts’ email addresses and load them into LinkedIn. If they’re already there, I invite them to join my list. I have many people on my LinkedIn list who I don’t contact very often, but I like to have that connection with them in case I think of something in the future that might interest them.