Thursday, November 16, 2006

The Start of the Silly Season and a Bevy of Business Cards

I was at two professional / networking events yesterday. The "silly season" has officially begun!

One was the FIS Alumni Tea yesterday afternoon at the University of Toronto, which I mentioned here on the blog a few days ago. Once again I enjoyed reconnecting with a number of people and meeting some new faces. It is always a pleasure to chat with students and see who my future colleagues will be!

Afterward I headed back downtown to the Mesh meetup for an hour or so. I had already been on my feet for a fair bit so unfortunately didn't stay as long as I might have. Still, I met a number of people including fellow bloggers and others interested in Web 2.0 as well as entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Some were even surprised that I blog "for free" and don't have any advertising on the site at all. Dear readers, consider yourself blessed that I have thus far refrained from putting ads on my blog posts!

But I digress...it was great to see Leesa and Stuart again and to meet some new people including Sacha, Juan, Ian and Mark. I missed Rob Hyndman this time around unfortunately! It was so crowded (about a 100 people in a space earmarked for the 60 who signed up) that I didn't even see him in the room.

My question for everyone: now that I have my new little collection of business cards, just what should I do with them? Obviously it was a great way to keep track of who I had met, and later add their blogs into this post. Some people have already emailed me to keep in touch and follow up on things we had discussed, which is just fantastic. Super networker Sacha even added me in to her LinkedIn contacts. Cool.

What other ideas do you have for the growing stack of business cards that I am collecting? How is it best to sort them and organize them? How should I store them? Suggestions welcome!

On a related note, I find it is time for me to have some personal business cards made up. I have been scribbling notes and blog addresses on the back of my work business card, but that is somehow inadequate. Any ideas for how to get inexpensive business cards drawn up, and possible design....feel free to let me know! Unfortunately I missed the free Moo photo cards offer on Flickr, but that is definitely one possibility.

Ah, well, time to run to the next professional networking social event, an author's reception with one of the publishers....

Cheers,
Connie

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aack!! The room was just too crowded :(

But it was a lot of fun. Thanks for coming, Connie.

My $.02 on the new biz cards?

http://gapingvoid.streetcards.com/

:)

Anonymous said...

Durrr! I came over to tell you to incorporate something from gapingvoid, but Rob Hyndman beat me to it!

Have fun and be sure to scan your new cards and post 'em for us to see!

James Milles said...

You can get free business cards at VistaPrint. Some of the podcasters at PPME used them.

Anonymous said...

And of course there are Moo cards, too. :)

Carolyne Sidey said...

Someone beat me to it. We got cards at VistaPrint and they were good quality. The cards are free but they have a vistaprint marketing line on the back. quite small and unobtrusive but still there.

Connie Crosby said...

Cool! Thanks, everyone. I will have a look into these.

Glad I asked! 8-)

Cheers,
Connie