Connecting with coincidence over a cuppa

A couple of years ago a couple of bright sparks at an innovation charity called Nesta set up a beautifully simple initiative which they called Randomised Coffee Trials. By randomly pairing staff who signed up to it, they created a way to give employees across their organisation an ‘excuse’ for a productive coffee break: “an opportunity to meet, catch up and build connections with the people around them. This has resulted in staff from different departments learning about unexpected synergies between their work, as well as created an increased level of comfort for subsequently approaching others regarding potential collaborations.”

Since then a number of organisations have taken up the initiative, the Red Cross have even made a lovely video about it! A few fab folk from local government digital teams across the land who make stuff happen by working together online through Local Gov Digital took the idea and set up UnMentoring. I signed up to UnMentoring earlier this year and everyone in Dudley I have talked to about it thinks it is a really good idea. As someone who likes to turn ideas into action I thought I’d see if we could get something going locally. I’ve called it Serendipitea.

I’ve played with the concept of serendipty because I’ve learned through reading about this that serendipity isn’t only a happy accident, you can intentionally create opportunities for serendipty. As Pedro Medina, who inspired Nesta’s Randomised Coffee Trials, says: “serendipity is all the fun things that happen when you allow yourself to be open and to have some flexibility with time.”

The tea bit is obvious. When is a conversation not helped by a lovely cuppa of whatever beverage takes your fancy?

If you would like to be paired up with someone different (potentially strangers!) on a monthly basis to connect and chat to for half an hour at a mutually agreed time and place, just head over to the sign up form on this page.