The Jeff Pulver Blog: Breakfast at Jeff’s: A Mashup of Face-to-Face Networking and Social Media Concepts

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March 15, 2008

Breakfast at Jeff’s: A Mashup of Face-to-Face Networking and Social Media Concepts

Since the start of 2008 I have hosted a number of breakfasts across the United States and most recently in Israel. I am looking forward to hosting my next breakfast in San Jose on Monday at Spring 2008 VON.x.

Rather than host ”just another business networking breakfast”, where it had been my own personal experience to be a place for people to gather, look for “that person or persons” to speak with, then pretend to listen to the special guest speaker and eventually leave while asking “why did I go there?" I have been applying concepts from the online world of social media, and introducing them into the world of face-to-face meetings. To date most of the people who have attended one of my breakfasts are friends of mine on Facebook and/or twitter or are friends of friends who are.

Each breakfast continues to be both a learning experience and an experiment for me. After each breakfast I look back and think about what could be done to make the experience better and what other social media concepts I might want to consider introducing. I have been using Facebook as the platform to manage the RSVP lists for these breakfasts. One advantage of using Facebook is that during the breakfasts, business cards don’t have to be exchanged since all that someone has to do is visit the event on Facebook and “friend” the people they met and wanted to continue their conversations with.

After applying what I learned hosting breakfasts in January and February, I came up with the idea which has become my new trademark, the “Personal Social Media Networking Toolkit.”

When a guest arrives at breakfast they are asked to write down their name together with their “Personal Tag Line.” It seems the hardest part of the morning for my guests is for them to figure out their personal tag line. A personal tag line is a great conversation starter. Guests are asked to think about their personal tag lines in advance and to bring their own name badges to the breakfast. Personal tag lines I have used at past breakfasts include: "I take having fun seriously" and "I travel for Breakfast." Once the name badge is taken care of, the guests are shown the stickers to be used for “real-time social tagging”, what to do with their “personal tag cloud” and the mini post-it notes to be used to write on each of our guests personal walls.

Back in 1996 I first wrote “the more virtual we become, the more we need to have face-to-face meetings” and I feel even stronger about this in 2008. I believe there is something real special going on at these breakfasts, things which I still don’t fully see but I hope to fully understand during the course of this year.

And while most of the people who have attended these breakfasts are people who are using one or more social media platforms and/or may be a professionally involved in the social media industry, I believe the concepts shared at my breakfasts can be applied to “real-life” events where no one attending is familiar with Social Media concepts but who are people who would benefit from a better face-to-face networking experience. I am thinking about writing a book about this. (Book Editors / Publishers – please feel free send a message to: jeffp@pulver.com and let me know if you are interested in discussing this with me. )

My friend David Kirkpatrick attended my recent breakfast in NYC and wrote about it in Fortune.

For now, my plan is to continue planning and hosting additional breakfasts during the year and continue to innovate and introduce new concepts at my breakfasts as time goes on.

Friends here on Facebook are invited to join me at one or more of my future breakfasts.

Updated "Breakfast with Jeff Pulver (and Friends)" Tour Dates (as of March 15, 2008):

March 17th – San Jose
March 20th – San Francisco
March 25h – Baltimore
March 26th – NYC
March 28th – Toronto
April 1st – Boston
April 3rd – Atlanta
April 9th – Tel Aviv
April 18th – Miami
May 1st – Washington DC
May 7th – Chicago
June 2nd – Amsterdam
June 5th – London
June 11th - Seattle
(More dates will be added in the near future)