Networking without Business Cards

In the 20th century, networking meant passing out business cards.

Within the last 10 years, this line of thinking slowly started to move towards sending digital files to each other containing your contact information called vCards through either e-mail, SMS, or Bluetooth.

Today, a technology that is sweeping Japan has slowly started to creep its way into our Western culture and could easily replace them both.  This technology is called "QR Codes". 

Believe it or not, two of the largest, proponents of QR Codes are: Research in Motion* and Google*

Here is an example of a QR Code:

In order to scan it, you need to have a QR reader on your cellphone.  Blackberries already have one built into the Blackberry Messenger, but there are a wide range of 3rd party software available for Blackberry, Android, and iPhone.  Here is just one of the many sites where you can find a list of such programs:

http://www.mobile-barcodes.com/qr-code-generator/

Now, go download and install of them.  I can wait.

Welcome back.  When you are done, scan the above QR code.

Your cellphone probably asked if you want to open your web browser and go to the article 2010 - The Year of the QR Code?  This article, which was written by Krissi Bates-Billings, whom I met during this year's BarCampOrlando, is an excellent discussion on the concept of QR codes.

Or...you can just pull of the QR Code Wikipedia Article.

Now that you know a little about QR codes, you're probably wondering how this relates to networking and synchronization.

There are several sites throughout the Internet that will not only allow you to create a QR code for a website, but you can also create them for a wide range of things, INCLUDING (but not limited to) the exact same vCard file that you would normally send via either email or SMS or Bluetooth containing:

• FirstName
• LastName
• Phone#
• Email
• CompanyName
• Title
• Website

Here are a handful of such sites and what you can/cannot create with them:

You'd never have to type in someone's information, fumble around with all those different business cards of people that you meet, or worry about losing someone's card.

In addition, there is the bonus of being able to include your own personal Memo or Note with your contact information.

Imagine being at a conference. Someone scans your QR code. When they go to pull you up in their Address Book, there is a note already there that could say something like "Met at 'such-and-such' on 'this date'". Now imagine that you change that Note to say "Met at...." for each event you go to. Not only would you stand out to that person, but it would make it easier for them to find you based on that particular note.

So the next time you see me in person, you better have your QR code ready because you can be sure that I'll be asking to scan it.

***[NOTE: For those of you in the world of social media and/or marketing, you probably noticed that the URL was actually shorten using a service called delivr.com.  Similar to services like bit.ly, delivr.com will shorten URLs and allow you to track the click-throughs.  However, unlike bit.ly, delivr.com will also generate a QR code which will track the number of QR scans, which as you can imagine, would be incredibly useful.]