**official** buzz and announcements

By Christer Holloman

In my book the Business Card has always been double edged sword. Every time a new pile of freshly printed business cards arrives on my desk get performance anxiety; am I really expected to meet 1,000 people this year? Reversely, when attending a really good conference as a guest or speaker, I think – how can I get my business cards in the hands of all these people? In both cases the answer is the same – it won’t happen.
How many meetings have you not attended where you exchange business cards with people you already have emailed with and therefore already have all contact details for? I even know a guy that manually scans received business cards to make them searchable on his computer.
Point is, business cards are a waste of time and paper. Business cards are a manifestation of an analogue world I was ready to leave behind a long time ago.

Finally someone has heard our cries for revolution.
It was when Stéphane Doutriaux graduated from his MBA that he observed the problems for a large group of people trying to scribble down each other’s email addresses, twitter accounts, and so on that he realised that there must be an easier way. He founded a company called Poken and invented a new kind of electronic business card (pictured above).
It’s basically a piece of plastic with a microchip that you can connect to your USB port. Once you plug it in you can create your profile and add your contact details. When you meet other Poken owners you simply swipe each other’s device and in a split second your have exchanged details and saved a tree.
When you come home and plug in your device you get a cool visualization of the people you have met. When they update their details, it’s also updated at your end.
Last week Poken secured $1.8 million in funding, so there is some belief out there that this can change the way we connect when out and about.
The only catch is that the people you meet also have to have the device for this to work. Maybe someone should just do a Business Card App instead. There you go, a free business idea from me to you.

:: Christer Holloman is chairman of First Tuesday UK, serial entrepreneur and intrapreneur, published author, public speaker and ranked as one of London’s most influential individuals within New Media by the Evening Standard.

The original blog post can be found here.