Design a thoughtful networking event
A friend of mine complained about how awful the cocktail party in her company was. Everyone felt awkward, trying to come up with a topic. Running out of topics, some of them even started gossiping about others. Though the intention of social events for a company is usually to strengthen the bonding among employees, without a thoughtful design, it can be counterproductive.
This Friday, I went to a networking event, Civitas, created by Minerva, which contained around 180 students and 40 professionals. With its unconventional design, I was able to learn, connect, and ask out for coffee chats in three hours of networking. This article is about the design in Civitas so that students are well-prepared and professionals feel natural to share and discuss in depth.
All participants receive pre-information about others, so we can quickly find people who share the same interests.
When we register for Civitas, we need to fill in our LinkedIn, profile pictures, and those questions below:
I could talk forever about these three things.
In one sentence, what is a project that has fired you up?
Professionally, I aspire to…
With these out-of-box questions, we no longer labeled others by their job position but their hobbies, dreams, and personalities. For instance, when I saw a professional who said one of the three things she could talk forever was “Elizabeth Holmes” and “toilet paper roll orientation”, I was so curiously excited. Elizabeth was the protagonist of an interesting book, Bad Blood that I read before, and we decided to have a coffee chat about Elizabeth after Civitas.
Without that information, I found people who connect with me professionally and personally, so I could send them a greeting on LinkedIn beforehand and looked for them by pictures during Civitas.
Warm-up with artistic activities at the start of the event that let down our guard.
At the beginning of a networking event, people could be defensive due to unfamiliarity, so Minerva set up some warm-up activities shared by students to connect us.
A story about her meaningful hug
A story about his volunteer experience with elders living alone
A slam poem performance titled “Small talk”
We are grouped in a small circle and then in pairs so we already gradually friend with people before networking.
- We are grouped in 8 to play games to share about some quick and short questions such as “Which TV character we want to friend with?” or “What is the thing we want to try this year?” etc.
- We paired up for 90 seconds and rotated for questions like “If we have totally freedom, what will we do differently in our life?” or “What is a project that has fired you up?” etc.
Culturally, San Francisco's open-minded culture might also be a contributing factor, but all in all, I had lots of fun! I got to know “learn to make and mess it up” philosophy from a product designer, got some professional cases about the application of human behavior, listen to an adoption story from a strategy consultant, and going to have a coffee chat about career development with an HR! I cannot wait to ask more questions by multiple channels with those cool people!
