internal networking

Today was a day of internal networking. I was at work for 10 hours (including lunch) and I think I spent 4 of those hours doing internal networking. Now let me tell you - I thought this was absolutely awesome. I love meeting people. Here's how it was done -

About two weeks ago, I decided that there had to be more people around the age of 22 in my entire company than just me. So, I decided to e-mail HR and ask for a list of names of everybody who had been a campus hire in the past few months. I got a list of 20 names or so, and so I e-mailed them. What it the e-mail say? Well, I introduced myself, explained the story and invited everybody to join me for lunch. Luckily there were other people crazy enough to respond yes. :) We ended up with a group of five of us and we went to Marathon Grill. The conversation spanned from traveling for work to college life to absinthe (I really want to spell that word with a 'y'...). I've got to tell you, I'm really glad that I did it. And we all had a pretty good time. My next idea? A pancake lunch. Now I just need to figure out how to make this happen.

The next networking event was speed networking - a lot like the concept of speed dating. Here's a note to everybody out there: bring business cards to this event. I thought of it probably 3 or 4 times that morning and somehow, I walked down stairs to the event without business cards. (Not surprised.) Instead of male/female we divided it up by two different halves of the company. Being forced to talk to people for 4 minutes is kind of awesome - it's just enough time that you can find out some cool things, but not enough time that there's awkward pauses. Now the question is will I remember all of their names on Monday to actually stay in touch with some of them. We'll see...