Word of the Week -- SPEED-NETWORKING
Golden Bay
a method of making a potential business contact by briefly talking to a
series of people at an organised event and exchanging contact details.
SPEED NETWORKER noun
You've heard of SPEED-DATING, an organised event attended by dozens of
single people who talk briefly to potential partners and decide whether
they might want to see any of them again. Combine this with the idea of
making professional, rather than romantic, contacts, and what do you
get? -- SPEED NETWORKING.
Speed networking is based on the idea that the usual way businesses,
especially small businesses, gain new contacts or clients is by
so-called networking - meeting to talk to people and exchange ideas.
Traditional networking events, like conferences, are often not very
productive because people tend to gravitate towards those they already
know, and wouldn't normally walk up to absolute strangers, even though
there are likely to be people in the room who would make promising
contacts. In a dedicated speed networking event, people are given a
structured environment in which they can talk to people they wouldn't
otherwise have come into contact with, and can quickly decide whether
there is a mutual interest without the need for polite or unnecessarily
long conversations.
The exact arrangements vary, but in a typical speed networking event,
people are given five minutes or less to talk to a potential contact,
and are then moved on -- often to the sound of a buzzer. At the end of
the meeting, business cards can be exchanged, thereby sowing the seeds
for a new commercial relationship.
E.g.,
'...Speed networking, as it's more often known, is a relatively new
urban trend, increasingly popular in a world where social "capital" --
who we know and how they can help us -- is prized.'
(The Guardian, 7th February 2005)
'Newcastle-based agency Contact25 goes a step further and gets speed
networkers to rate each of the contacts they meet, on a scale of one to
five on the basis of how useful they might be ...'
(BBC News, 8th December 2004)