Speed Geeking: A How To

Last Tuesday was the monthly g33k d1nner and I planned to do Speed Geeking. What is speed geeking you might ask: well the concept is stolen from speed dating.

The idea is speed geeking is a fast way to get to know other technologically inclined people. As anyone who is a geek knows, starting a conversation with someone you don't know is one of the reasons we prefer computers. I probably would rarely make it to a geek dinner if I was not actually coordinating them. One of the "problems" of the geek dinners is that there are so many interesting people and you can't meet everyone. Speed geeking was invented to help that.

How I did it

1. I wanted to pick a quiet place to have dinner, with tables that would be easily navigated. (I envisioned people getting up and moving around every 5 or 10 minutes.) I choose Shakey's Pizza because cheap pizza, pitchers of beer and last time we were there on a Tuesday night it was DEAD. We practically had the whole place to ourselves.
2. I made up question cards. Each card had one "starter" question on it. For example: "What is the strangest place you have wified from?" and "Social network sites: useful or not?" and "What is the first computer you owned?"
3. As people arrived, I handed each person a question card and asked them to get into groups of 3 to 5 people per table. Each person would ask someone at the table the question on their card. Everyone would ask one question and would answer one question.
4. After 15 minutes tables would mix and there would be a new group of 3 to 5 people to ask/answer questions.

I think the concept worked better in theory than in practice. This was for several things that were outside my control.

1. When I got to Shakey's the place was pretty full and the tables I had requested were occupied. The tables that had been set aside for us were right in front of TVs that were blaring some sporting event. (This was a totally different situation from the last time we were at Shakey's.) Our group ended up moving into an alcove area that was really too small for us.
2. Food was a bit of a problem. Or rather, trying to speed geek and eat at the same time.
3. I came prepared with 4 different questions. I think having more variety in the questions would have improved things.
4. The loudness level. Once we crammed into the alcove we were the ones causing the noise.
5. Timing. I'm not sure this happened.

All in it was a successful first run, with lots of things to improve upon. I'm definitely trying this again, but with the following tweaks.

1. Better to have it part of something - like Barcamp or a BOF or before/after dinner - where you can move around with people quickly without food, plates, etc.
2. More diverse questions
3. A better way to organize/communicate the timing.

I'm definitely going to have a session at the next Barcamp (or a BOF at a geek conference) where I try this again. Less distractions (food, noise), more questions and maybe a megaphone.

If you try speed geeking, let me know how it goes and what works for you.

Comments

[From Cj in an email to the BarcampLA list]

So I wasn't there (see previous whinny post), but I envisioned 'speed
geeking' as a 1-on-1 conversation. Assuming you don't need to talk to
yourself, and we have N people, there should be N-1 conversations.
Call it 5 minutes a conversation, you can get away with 12
conversations per hour. The last g33k dinner had 20-25 people - so
call it 2-2.5 hours to go through everybody. If we all sit at one
huge table (like when we were at El Cholo) everyone can simply slide
one seat down every 5 minutes and have a new conversation with the
person across from them. Each person can rattle off their who/what/
why in 30 seconds or so, than a fun conversation occurs for the
remaining 3-4 minutes. At the end of the event, you end up with a
stack of business cards (or at least contact info cards - they should
be mandatory for each person) - some of which you want to email and
ask them about their cool coding-in-sanskrit complier project, some of
which you want to file in your revolving bin.

Thoughts? I may be completely wrong about this approach but felt like
sharing anyway...

[Brad Templeton]

I think the speed geeking idea is very interesting so I wonder if there's a way to make it work. I have not done speed dating but I presume they do it in a larger space with enough gap so the noise level doesn't become overwhelming. I can think of some interesting and of course geeky things to add to it.

In theory, it starts less efficient. Consider 10 people talking to each other for 2 minute slots each. That takes 18 minutes and each person hears the other for 1 minute. In an "around the circle" talk, everybody gets 1.8 minutes to talk to the whole crowd in that amount of time, so they can express almost twice as much.

However, the conversation is two-way and thus will center in on what really matters to each person. You won't waste time telling the other person things they already know, or can't understand, and they can ask questions to get at what's important. So the question is, can that be twice as good as listening to a person address an audience (with possible audience questions.)

(In speed dating you only meet half the people in the room, unless it's bi speed dating. Has anybody done bi speed dating?)

To improve it, I can imagine people making notes (in the geeky for computerized notes) on which people had the most interesting things to talk about or just telling the person interesting things to say until you distill the thing that person has to say that everybody should hear, and so then shift into a phase where each person addresses the entire group, saying things derived from all the one on ones.

As noted you might counter the inefficiency by having groups of 3 or 4 but then you may find it hard to pattern it. A group of 9, split into 3 groups of 3, meets 4 times, each grouping with no overlap. That's 12 minutes for each person to have a minute, which is only 33% extra not 90% extra.

[chef JoAnna via email]

I thought the same thing you did, CJ, when I heard of speedgeeking. and I'd rather ask my own questions :-)

but what about a blend of the two? the idea of having a smaller group to talk to (4-5 people) would be nice, in that you would give your monologue less often & that would save time. but you'd spend maybe 15 mins as a group, instead of just 5 with an individual. the purpose is to meet, get a bit of face time, and then contact later if the vibe is good. right?

and it would be a little less awkward to spend time with virgin-seeking MTV'ers in disguise

don't know how you'd shuffle people, tho, didn't get that far into doing the math.

[chef JoAnna via email]

BTW, I did figure out a way that the rotations could go pretty smoothly. It isn’t as complicated as it looks.

Write a number, 1 thru 25, on each nametag in order, as people come in.
-- if there’s more than 25, still go 1 thru 25, and then start at 1 again...

Then print out a grid for each table. I've attached a grid for a room that’s set up with 5 tables.

Everyone gives their 2-min spiel, everyone trades biz cards, over 15-20 mins.

When the time’s up, everyone would simply go to the next table, as listed on the grid, and start again with the spiels...

It’s arranged so that everyone will meet everyone else by the time the night is done It should take about 1.5 hours to get through the whole thing, then if there’s time, people can do open networking after that.

[heathervescent]

I've been getting a lot of responses to this post in email, so I'm trying to post those responses up here to have an open conversation. I LOVE the thoughtful comments and good ideas.

[Michael Lambie]

Heather, sorry i missed. i can't wait to speed geek soon.