during the event

Tapahtuman aikana

• Vuorovaikutus pelit? Ryhmäkohtaiset pulmat? Haaste josta jopa henkilökohtaista hyötyä? Tiimin edistäminen? Salapoliisitehtävä?
• Ohjelma loppuu, vapaamuotoinen keskustelu

Arriving to the Event

Welcoming Participants

The first thing that happens when a participant enters the venue is a staff member who greets them and advices them to get their personal name badge. It is important that the participants feel valued and know they have come to the right place. The participants are also adviced of entering the Starting Point to find out more.

Starting point (we can still name it something else as well...)

There are two important reasons for having this starting lane. One is to lower the barrier to interaction to those who do not feel it's a natural skill, such as the more introvert people. The other is to bring some structure into the event which is also appreciated by certain people. These reasons will both lower the barrier to enter the event and to  participate and interact during the event. In order to build more effective teams, we need different types of personalities, all of which do not appreciate just hanging around or may see social settings and unknown people somewhat difficult. Also different themes may be used to address certain type of people. 

Starting point is not mandatory to complete, but everyone should go there and get their name tags. There are options in implementing this: tags could be there ready to be picked up, or people could print them out there. Those who are familiar with the starting point could then head out to the crowd or grab some food or drinks. We considered that while we know who are attending the event, this is the kind of information that also benefits the participants themselves. The cost of producing such slips or stickers is considerably low and reguires a little effort, as all of the information to be put into the tag can be gathered while people make their registrations to the event. We would like to put forward the idea of giving name tags to people based on multiple reasons. Firstly, it helps to identify the sponsors and hosts of the event and therefore contacting them is easier. Secondly, if a person is looking for someone he/she is especially interested to contact after glancing the participant list, it is possible to find those people with somewhat less effort than without the name tags. Thridly, name tagging people help participants to remember the names of the interesting people. As there is a lot of (more or less) sophisticared babbling going over at the event, it is not always that easy to hear names correctly. Further we put forward an idea of including some personal information on the tags addingly to participants name, position and employer. The personal information is considered to feature something that the carrier finds to descrdibe his/her personality and or interests in short. We argue that this is one more way to lower the bar especially for the introverts to naturally start conversations with new people they have never met.

Next step or steps in the starting point would be activities to lower the barrier to start a conversation with unknown people. There shouldn't be too many tasks or tasks that take a long time to complete, and also they may vary between events so that the starting point is not the same every time.

Possible activities could be:

• Goal setting: the participant plans who to talk to during the event. A participant list helps.
• Participant gets a small ABC of how to socialize: tips on how to start conversations and a reminder to keep in touch afterwards.
• A short intro into pitching oneself (for instance a basic one sentence structure).

The doors to the event should open about 1h earlier than the invited guests are introduced. This gives everyone the chance to enter the starting point before the event actually kicks off.

Presenting the hosts of the evening

-Introductions, then short presentations

-some sort of a podium so that everybody can see and hear what they have to say.

While visiting SocFri it was noticeable that after the introductions the hosts and the sponsors of the evening drowned in the crowd. Perhaps the method of identifying these key players could be done in a manner that makes them step out of the mass more easily.

Theme activities

-The detective game etc.

Free conversation

-Some kind of notice that the programme is over, wishing the people to migle by themselves freely.

According to Ingram & Morris people mix at "mixing" events such as SocFri, but not as much as they might. Pre-existing relationships and networks affect the mixing process so that people tend to engage with people they've met before the event. It's also argued that in events like this people do encounter and engage with others different from them. (Ingram & Morris, 2007)

How could we then foster the participants to step out from their so called comfort zone and actively carry out engaging with new people in order to outstrech their networks, not just to strenghten the existing ties?

Ingram, P., & Morris, M. W. (2007). Do People Mix at Mixers? Structure, Homophily, and the "Life of the Party". Administrative Science Quarterly, 52(4), 558-585