28 February 2010
By Tennie Videler
Who remembers beetle drives? Aaah, nostalgia for a Britain long lost. I shouldn’t be able to feel it being an immigrant but I have been submerged in this culture for long enough to have caught it. And I played beetle drive in my local pub recently. It was good fun, a mad sort of cross between speed dating and a childish board game. The aim og the game is to be the first pair to draw a full beetle, what you’re allowed to draw depends on the throw of the dice. Once one pair has a full beetle and shouted ‘Beetle’, half the people move tables and team up with someone else, beverage in hand. It was funny to see how competitive and serious some folks were and I chatted to a lot of people, albeit briefly.
I have blogged on parallels between my attempts to integrate in our twee village and our emerging online community before but this will take a slightly different twist…. I didn’t think about that evening much since. But this week I was asked to give a presentation at a London Vitae Hub networking meeting on the networking opportunities Vitae offers researchers. So I mentioned this blog of course, and the UKRSA, but I also mentioned Vitae events and especially the research staff conference. I had spoken to Daniel Colegate of Graduate Junction and he had convinced me of the need to have real life interactions to make online communities a success. Kevin Byron also said the same in his talk.
I was on the question and answer panel at the end. Two staff developers from different London universities had decided to design a workshop on networking together ( the had really got into the idea of productive networking). They asked the panel for tips on what to include in this workshop. My tip was to include a beetle drive….. I then had to explain what it was. Judging by the number of emails I have had about beetle drives since, it sounds like this was the most memorable and useful thing that I contributed to that meeting.
Anyone else know fun networking activities/ icebreakers etc? Or do you hate that sort of thing?
Hannah Dee01 March 2010 at 01:50 PM
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I've done "speed networking" a few times before, and think it's OK. But to be honest I prefer informal networking to anything structured, and I have a bit of prejudice against "icebreakers". In one organisation I've been in, meetings start with timed 30 second introductions from each person and this works quite well. You end up with an idea of who everyone is and who you're likely to want to talk to in any informal networking situation.