C is for… Coffee Roulette
Coffee mornings have been a staple part of my networking routine during the past year. Setting up a coffee catch up is really easy but if you want to meet new people rather than just regular contacts you might also want to join in with a Coffee Roulette.
What is Coffee Roulette?
Coffee Roulette is exactly how it sounds. It is being randomly matched with a group of people for coffee meetings each week (or other regular interval). It can be a great way to network both internally within your organisation as well as professionally with different networking groups or others with a common interest. It is a simple way to bring people together and help create potential business opportunities.
How to Set up Coffee Roulette?
There are a number of automated services out there for creating random matches for Coffee Roulette, but it can also be done manually. Simply start by picking a regular time slot for your coffee mornings and ask people to sign up. Once people have signed up you can then put them in groups randomly. It is best to have a leader for each group and a mix of people who don’t know each other, or who want to get to know each other better.
What to talk about?
Coffee can be structured or informal. You might just choose to have a lead who sets up the meeting and encourages everyone to introduce each other and encourage informal conversation. Alternatively, you might wish to have something with a bit more structure. For example you might just go round the group and ask everyone to talk for 5 minutes and do a 5 minute introduction by each person to who they are, role, and to answer a particular question.
Other Coffee Networking Ideas
Alternatively, if you don’t have a random group of people to match you might just want to set up regular coffee mornings for example on a monthly basis for a small group of people with a common interest to give them an opportunity to keep in touch and network on a regular basis.
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