What an excellent evening! Our Speed Networking evening, organised on behalf of the Federation of Small Businesses, drew in around a dozen inividual and a coupe of pairs with a disparate range of products to sell, and a wide variety of requirements to meet - some by using other's products and services.

Seated at either side of what was (in theory) a single long table, each person moved one seat left every five minutes thus meeting every other person they passed. And when they went back down the other side of the table, we had engineered it so that they met the people they had missed on the way up.

Six meetings, then 5 5-minute presentations on aspects of individual's interests and businesses, and a further six meetings ... everyone felt that the two hours was excellently spend and went away with at least one (and in most cases several) excellent new contacts.

---

It worked in Melksham ... and it would would in Matlock, Mexborough, Mitcham, Moreton and Mumbles too. So let me share my algorithms / organisation scripts.

1. To set up a sheet to hand to each delegate as he / she arrives:

Delagate Number:

2. To set up a sheet to place at each seat around the table (seats 1, 3, 5, 7, down one side, opposite them seats 2, 4, 6, 8 etc):

Delagate Number:
Total delegates attending:

(We need to know the total number of delegates to adjust the algorithm for an odd or an even number of attendees. With an odd number, one "speeder" sits out each time, and with an even number, one remains in a particular chair all evening to provide the "offset" on the way back and ensure that different people are met)

3. To provide the organiser's matrix:

Total Delegates:

"Speed networking in Melksham on behalf of the FSB"

Other Speed Networking articles

Advertising, setup, planning

The event itself and planning sheets

Background, pictures

Direct link to seat script

Direct link to Matrix script

Update - 22nd June 2007 We're now fully booked for Thursday, 28th June, but will run another event in the Autumn (Tuesday 16th October 2007) for another group of up to 20 Melksham businesses. It won't be the same old faces each time either, as we'll only be taking a maximum of 5 "repeat" bookings, and (for events further in the future) no-one three times in sucession

(written 2007-04-21, updated 2007-06-23)

 Z401 - Federation of Small Businesses
  [1078] Wiltshire - multicultural community - (2007-02-13)
  [1097] Train and business balls all in the air! - (2007-03-02)
  [1133] B-2-B Networking, 20th April. Useful for YOUR business? - (2007-04-03)
  [1246] An oddball day. Strange experiences! - (2007-06-27)
  [1249] Is this how to run a business for businesses? - (2007-06-27)
  [1278] West Wilts Show - (2007-07-26)
  [1284] An update on the West Wilts show ... - (2007-07-30)
  [1286] A wasted evening? - (2007-08-01)
  [1350] FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) Western Region - (2007-09-13)
  [1479] FSB leaves its members feeling like mushrooms - (2007-12-20)
  [1512] Summer Ball at Bowood - Saturday 12th July 2008 - (2008-01-19)
  [1515] Keeping staff up to date on hotel room status - (2008-01-22)
  [1544] FSB, EGM, AGM. - (2008-02-18)
  [1654] The old sayings are the best (FSB) - (2008-05-26)
  [1823] FSB - an update. - (2008-10-07)
  [1855] Volunteer v Employee - a skewed balance? (FSB) - (2008-10-25)
  [1880] Melksham Chamber of Commerce, or the FSB - (2008-11-12)
  [1937] Getting hold of the wrong end of the stick - (2008-12-12)
  [2517] Blogging accuracy - open invitation for any corrections - (2009-11-29)
  [2524] An update on legal changes from the FSB? - (2009-12-03)
  [3032] Coincidence, or Conspiracy - a wrong email address - (2010-11-06)
  [3214] Melksham Campus - any last minute inputs from Melksham businesses? - (2011-03-26)
  [3522] Networking - North and West Wilts FSB Style - (2011-11-15)

Q110 - Object Orientation and General technical topics - Programming Algorithms
  [202] Searching for numbers - (2005-02-04)
  [227] Bellringing and Programming and Objects and Perl - (2005-02-25)
  [642] How similar are two words - (2006-03-11)
  [1187] Updating a page strictly every minute (PHP, Perl) - (2007-05-14)
  [1391] Ordnance Survey Grid Reference to Latitude / Longitude - (2007-10-14)
  [1840] Validating Credit Card Numbers - (2008-10-14)
  [1949] Nuclear Physics comes to our web site - (2008-12-17)
  [2189] Matching disparate referencing systems (MediaWiki, PHP, also Tcl) - (2009-05-19)
  [2259] Grouping rows for a summary report - MySQL and PHP - (2009-06-27)
  [2509] A life lesson from the accuracy of numbers in Excel and Lua - (2009-11-21)
  [2586] And and Or illustrated by locks - (2010-01-17)
  [2617] Comparing floating point numbers - a word of caution and a solution - (2010-02-01)
  [2894] Sorting people by their names - (2010-07-29)
  [2951] Lots of way of converting 3 letter month abbreviations to numbers - (2010-09-10)
  [2993] Arrays v Lists - what is the difference, why use one or the other - (2010-10-10)
  [3042] Least Common Ancestor - what is it, and a Least Common Ancestor algorithm implemented in Perl - (2010-11-11)
  [3072] Finding elements common to many lists / arrays - (2010-11-26)
  [3093] How many toilet rolls - hotel inventory and useage - (2010-12-18)
  [3102] AND and OR operators - what is the difference between logical and bitwise varieties? - (2010-12-24)
  [3451] Why would you want to use a Perl hash? - (2011-09-20)
  [3620] Finding the total, average, minimum and maximum in a program - (2012-02-22)
  [3662] Finding all the unique lines in a file, using Python or Perl - (2012-03-20)
  [4325] Learning to program - what are algorithms and design patterns? - (2014-11-22)
  [4401] Selecting RECENT and POPULAR news and trends for your web site users - (2015-01-19)
  [4402] Finding sum, minimum, maximum and average in Python (and Ruby) - (2015-01-19)
  [4410] A good example of recursion - a real use in Python - (2015-02-01)
  [4652] Testing new algorithms in PHP - (2016-02-20)
  [4656] Identifying the first and last records in a sequence - (2016-02-26)
  [4707] Some gems from an introduction to Python - (2016-10-29)

G502 - Well House Consultants - Business Practice
  [15] 90 to 10 or 80 to 20 rule - (2004-08-15)
  [27] Sales technique - (2004-08-25)
  [68] Get the strategy worked out and the tactics just fall into place. - (2004-09-30)
  [77] Telephone systems - (2004-10-07)
  [88] Getting the right level of trainer - (2004-10-14)
  [95] Five red flags - (2004-10-21)
  [108] A typical morning - (2004-11-03)
  [121] Fair and Simple - (2004-11-17)
  [125] Staff theft - (2004-11-21)
  [129] Trawling our site to prevent student copying - (2004-11-24)
  [137] Certification schemes - (2004-12-02)
  [157] Automatic service upgrades - (2004-12-19)
  [180] Skunk works - (2005-01-17)
  [188] Pink elephant and appreciation - (2005-01-24)
  [200] Tips for the top - (2005-02-03)
  [211] Look after your staff and they'll look after you. AOL. - (2005-02-12)
  [217] Use of time - (2005-02-16)
  [226] Growing our systems - (2005-02-24)
  [297] A reminder that the customer is King - (2005-05-01)
  [321] Sales - the alternative close - (2005-05-23)
  [399] simplicity hides real size - (2005-07-31)
  [438] Fair system for travel and accommodation expenses - (2005-09-07)
  [457] Do the work and take the risk - a PHP contract to avoid - (2005-10-06)
  [467] Tell them three times - (2005-10-17)
  [487] On line course booking - credit card protection - (2005-11-06)
  [491] Being atypical is typical - (2005-11-10)
  [536] Cancellations and penalties - (2005-12-21)
  [626] Not just a pretty face to answer the phone. - (2006-02-26)
  [652] Morning Post - (2006-03-20)
  [664] Ruby course - oops - it's not happening - (2006-04-01)
  [766] Discounts and approved supplier lists - (2006-06-17)
  [808] Sales call - (2006-07-19)
  [849] Staff Meeting - (2006-08-30)
  [869] UNABLE TO ATTEND - (2006-09-16)
  [883] Age discrimination law - (2006-10-01)
  [906] A commitment we won't be making - (2006-10-27)
  [1057] Selling by phone and Skype - our policy - (2007-01-30)
  [1084] Writing terms and conditions for conferences and other events - (2007-02-17)
  [1165] Extended Credit request - train in June and be paid in September - (2007-04-27)
  [1243] Heavy duty hole punch - (2007-06-24)
  [1260] An inspirational business talk from one of our prospective MPs - (2007-07-06)
  [1263] 0800 043 8225 - a new phone number for Well House - (2007-07-10)
  [1319] Customer feedback - lifeblood of a business - (2007-08-25)
  [1342] Google, wwmdirectory, Freshwater, ATP - new scam? - (2007-09-09)
  [1373] New Month, New Quarter, New Laws - (2007-10-01)
  [1394] Business to Business Networking - North and West Wilts / Melksham - (2007-10-17)
  [1453] What makes our courses special? - (2007-12-02)
  [1485] Copyright and theft of images, bandwidth and members. - (2007-12-26)
  [1626] Early May - a short chance to regroup and improve - (2008-05-01)
  [1713] Ways to accept credit cards - or not! - (2008-07-19)
  [1913] Alastair Darling helps make paperwork and confusion - (2008-11-30)
  [2044] Please Trouble me - (2009-02-16)
  [2122] Commission Creep - (2009-04-08)
  [2126] Weeding out old phone numbers - (2009-04-11)
  [2161] Get it right ... if it goes wrong, it takes so much effort to sort out! - (2009-05-08)
  [2187] Are we IITT (Institute of IT Training) members? - (2009-05-17)
  [2190] How you are (re)presented at an exhibition - (2009-05-19)
  [2283] Everyone is in the customer relations business - (2009-07-12)
  [2331] Certification Revisted - Lua - (2009-08-09)
  [2465] Melksham Town - asleep or awake? - (2009-10-21)
  [2598] An excuse for making a sales call - (2010-01-26)
  [2788] Cost of Sales - (2010-06-01)
  [2821] Chancellor George Osborne inspires Perl Program - (2010-06-22)
  [2936] The service that customers should receive - (2010-08-27)
  [2966] Cheap Country Hotel in Melksham, Wiltshire? - (2010-09-21)
  [3073] Customer Service - the boundary - (2010-11-27)
  [3157] A new monopoly on the ferry to Northern Ireland - (2011-02-04)
  [3333] Honesty and a friendly welcome goes a long way - (2011-06-25)
  [3506] Cold call contacts - preference services and turning off spam sales approaches - (2011-11-03)
  [3613] Keeping Business Local. But is that realistic? - (2012-02-13)
  [3665] Will will smile? - (2012-03-22)
  [3750] Matching opening hours to when customers can come in and buy - (2012-06-04)
  [3755] Cruising on the Mersey Ferry? - (2012-06-07)
  [4107] Snog, Marry, Avoid - (2013-05-31)
  [4293] Certification - (2014-09-15)
  [4415] Buffet review - taking the price into account - (2015-02-05)
  [4520] No cold sales calls please - but delighted to hear from others! - (2015-09-29)

Back to Two by One by Wiltshire

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Forward to Private Java Course - A customer's pictures

A contrast in room rates and facilities
HTML - example of a simple web page
It can take more that one plus one to get two.
Private Java Course - A customer's pictures
Speed Networking - a great evening and how we arranged it
Two by One by Wiltshire
Pointers in C
As I came back from Tesco
Object Oriented Model - a summary of changes from PHP4 to PHP5
Course, right place, right time