One of the most important parts of a conference or corporate event is to meet, collaborate and network with other participants – especially if you have invited colleagues from different offices around the globe. However, giving the participants the opportunity to get to know each other, and to get them to actually start talking to others than their closest colleagues during the conference, are two very different things.

So what can you do to help your colleagues get the most out of your event?

With push notifications, in-app chat, the activity feed, the participants list and integrated meeting rooms, it will be super easy for everyone to network, regardless of whether they are on site or participate digitally in your event!

Help the participants make a connection – in person or virtual

The coffee break is a good time for people to establish new connections and reflect on what has been discussed during the meetings in a more informal environment, but since many of us find it quite inconvenient to approach new people, we often end up talking about the same things with the same people as usual. So how can we help our colleagues step out of their bubbles and approach new people? A good solution is to hold a mingle competition! To begin with, incentives always help – so make sure to get a nice and fun price that goes to the first person or people who manages to complete your tasks. Then start sending out challenges in push notifications to everyone, using your event app. For example, you can ask your attendees to:

• “Find a person with whom you have a common interest, look them up in the Participants section and add their contact information to your phone.”
• “Find someone who has the same color on a piece of clothing as you, take a picture and post it in the Activity Feed.”
• And so on…

Then just use the in-app Chat feature or Activity feed to get the discussion going!

Play and laughter makes it easier to mingle

The coffee break is often no longer than 15 minutes, meaning you won’t have enough time for any advanced networking exercises. A really good thing to do during an event is to set aside one hour for, for example, roundtable discussions or speed dating. Use the app so that everyone can join, no matter where they are.

Set up a roundtable discussion by using automatic participant grouping and integrated virtual meeting rooms, then you just send out discussion topics to everyone through push notifications. For example:

• What do you like best about your job?
• What is your biggest challenge at work right now?
• What do you think is the most important issue that we as a company should focus on in the coming year?
• What do you do to relax and/or have fun?
• What is the strangest thing you have experienced?
• And so on…

There are lots of networking games out there, just a Google search away. Often, however, a lot of preparations are needed to get it right – something that is both time-consuming and can be bad for the environment if it involves printing out a lot of material. With a few simple tricks, it is possible to reinvent most games and create something really awesome with the help of an event app. Feel free to try one of the examples above or find something on your own. With a fun and spontaneous networking game, the participants will remember and appreciate your event long after it’s ended – especially considering all the valuable connections they now get to bring home.

With an app networking is made easy

Whether you have 50 or 500 participants at your event, MeetApp can help you promote discussion and make new contacts, only your imagination limits what is possible. Would you like to brainstorm ideas about what you could do with an event app to create really fun and memorable events?