Our Blog

As a technology nonprofit, we constantly try to innovate within everything we do. I recently wrote about our innovative recruitment and hiring process. On November 15, we hosted our annual TechBash fundraiser. It was a great success! So much so, that I wanted to talk a bit about our approach to facilitating networking, as I think the future is in social trading cards.

Now I’m sure you’re saying to yourself social trading cards? What in the world is that? At TechBash, we had more than 50 CIOs who served as “Celebrity Bartenders.” Feedback from prior events was attendees were looking for ways that i.c.stars could assist with networking games. We are always looking for ways to build games and fun ways to facilitate networking. What ideas have you tried in the past? Have you had success?

The events committee was up for the task of creating an interesting game to enhance networking. We bounced around ideas to play up the celebrity factor. Since our revamped website has photos and bios of everyone in our network, we considered blowing up the photos to 8x10 headshots and having the CIO’s autograph them. However, we soon realized that people would probably not want to carry around these large photos all night.

Then the idea of trading cards came about, and the idea really resonated with me because I used to love trading and collecting baseball cards with my brother when we were kids. Mark Grace was my favorite, and my brother’s favorite player was Darryl Strawberry. We would sit for hours reading the stats and comparing the players. Trading cards have become a cornerstone of American culture and something about them evokes a happy and youthful feeling within people.

As a technology focused organization, we also wanted to to add a social component to our celebrity cards. Through collaboration with our staff and our events committee, we decided on the look and feel of the cards. We put QR codes on the cards that would lead to an event map and the CIO’s bio when scanned with a smartphone.

When many people think about networking, they think about only making connections on a professional level and not on a personal level. In contrast, I feel the best networkers are those who other people can relate to personally. Finding commonality is the best way to form bonds outside of just work. It is easy to look at someone’s bio and see where they attended school or past places of employment.

• What is your favorite book?
• Do you have any special talents?
• What is your favorite board game?

We even used some of the info in preparation for the event. We had a “board room” set up at Excalibur that featured many favorite games like Scrabble, Jenga, and Connect 4 that hosted quite a few epic battles that night.

We also had people that submitted their own interesting facts about themselves that lead to some great conversations. For instance, Tim Mather of PMA Consultants can surf on his head, and Cary Claver from United Airlines, whose favorite book is “Here’s The Situation” by Mike Sorrentino from MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” is a real jokester. It is not only fun to see how people’s personalities come out when given these trading cards; it is also valuable for other people who are looking to network with the “CIO Celebrities.” It can give them a way to relate and work on making deeper connections.

In addition to the trading cards, we also had a live Twitter stream featuring the hashtag #techbash11 on the big screen at the event. People enjoyed having their tweets broadcasted live. While the cards, board games, and live Twitter feed were all great and we received positive feedback about the event, we are always looking to build and innovate.

In retrospect there are minor things that we know we will tweak for next year’s event. Following the Lean methodology, we always listen to and value the feedback and ideas of our clients, sponsors, friends, and event attendees to make our organization better.

I would love to hear from you about ideas you have tried in the past to facilitate networking. Have they been successful?