Mar 22

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Photo by Tad Wagner

The South by Southwest (SXSW) Conferences & Festivals offer the unique convergence of original music, independent films, and emerging technologies. Fostering creative and professional growth alike, SXSW is the premier destination for discovery.

Networking for 10 days (or even 5) can easily overwhelm even the most advanced conference-goer.  What does X company do?  Who did I meet last night that I wanted to follow up with?  What was the restaurant I wanted to try in Memphis?  Which after party did I end up at the other night? 

Oniracom enjoyed an incredibly successful 10 day stint of networking, film viewing, music listening and trade show booth-ing.  Here are 3 tips for your next trip to SXSW or any other conferences and festivals.

1) Remember your A, B, Cs:  Typically when meeting somebody, we can assume quickly if they are a potentially useful connection or not.  Practice makes perfect, and to enable consistent practice, we use a simple method we call “A, B, C.”  Along with the reminder note of who, what, why, how we met, we include a letter on their business card.  “A” connections need to be followed up immediately while “C” connections are least urgent, but still may be useful.  If no letter is written, we assume no follow up is needed, although there may be another reason for the connection which is notated.

2) FourSquare Recollection:  Each night, our heads are spinning come bedtime, partially from the constant meet and greets, and partially from loud music and alcohol.  In order to recap our days and nights, we use FourSquare to checkin at each location attended.  This makes for a nice recap of our daily journeys.  Another tip is to wait a while to checkin at a location until a good connection is made to include their Twitter handle in the post, adding more context to who is met where.  But don’t wait until you leave to checkin as your friends may be on their way to a particular venue in hopes of meeting up.

3) New App: #Hashable:  Lastly, the best new networking app we found at SXSW this year is called #Hashable.  It’s “bump” with true social media integration.  Enter just an email or Twitter address and be instantly connected.  Broadcast that you just had #lunch or #coffee with somebody and have both people’s followers know immediately about this meet-up.  The inner-circle feature is great for companies with multiple people networking at an event as they will know who met who at which location in context of the meeting.  And then late at night, enter all the business cards you collected to this app for less work after the event.

Let us know if you have more tips and we’ll add them to the article!


Photo by Tad Wagner

 

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