MatchupCamp

I attended MatchupCamp tonight. It was an idea Eran mentioned to me when I first met him at Startupcamp awhile back and thought it was a great idea. It finally came into fruition.

The idea behind it was that it was going to be an "open-space networking event
where everyone you meet is a potential match for your talent or idea."

It was basically a nextNY networking event. Unfortunately one that was short on drinks.

They had some tools to facilitate the networking

• Color-coded nametags

• Demospace: If you brought your laptop you can show off your goods anywhere
  

• Pitch wall= physical job board.

The name tags were a nice touch. But I still felt that more could have been done to facilitate interaction between job providers and job seekers

Three ways of possibly facilitating the group
1. Either having a speed dating deal. Where startups looking for people would sit on one side and people looking to join a startup on the other. Every 5 minutes ppl would switch, etc...
2. Placing tags around the room and ppl would congregate in areas of interest. (ex. php, ruby, music, video, advertising, etc)
3. Have people go around the room announcing their names this way people could put faces to all the names that were posted on the wiki.

However I'm not really sure if the people attending tonights event would have benefited from these types of structure.
Since there were more people looking for hires than people looking to be hired.

All in all, I had a great time chatting with fellow nextNYers in person, thanks to Eran and everyone who helped organize and promote the event. I look forward to the next Matchupcamp.
If you attended I would love to hear your thoughts and experience.