How to network with the right people at the right moment: insights from C2 Montréal.
Pillar of business innovation is working together and meeting the right people at the right moment. And this is exactly what is C2 Montréal.
Each year, more than 6,500 decision makers and creative people meet there “to shape, live and reinvent the future of business”. At first glance you may think that C2 is like every event, a huge place with a large programmation and a lot of people. Yes, this is C2 but not only. C2 is also one of the best event worldwide where you can meet the right people for your business and where you can actually really accelerate your business.
Makestorming was here this year and we have experimented what are the perfect conditions to do a meaningful network.
We deeply believe that meeting the right people and working together is key for accelerating projects and doing real business innovation. That’s why we’ve put together the perfect agenda for you, so for your next event or meetups you will know how to profit from it.
Back to basics
- The dedicated areas
What is very pleasant and useful is that every single place has its particularity and its goals. The site is divided into specific areas so that you can choose your place on your interests. If you want to get inspired by personalities, the Big Top is the place to listen to conferences and masterclasses, but if you want to meet people in a private area, you can go to the specific lounge spaces. So depending on your objective, the site is made for every kind of meeting: big groups or one-to-one meeting.
When you realize it’s not a classic event
- The connected badge
When you arrive on site you receive a big weird… connected badge. “No one comes to a conference just to spend three days glued to a cell phone. Just the opposite — technology should help us optimize the time we’re lucky enough to share with some of the most passionate and exciting people in the world.” At C2, technology is here to help you connect with people and to make your network easier.
You just had an impromptu conversation? You just “klik” on your respective badges to exchange contact informations — it’s magic. This smart badge launched by PixMob in 2017 is directly connected to your Klik mobile app (the C2 event mobile app) so when you “klik” with someone, you receive his/her contact informations on your mobile app.
The other applications of this smart badge are payment and library. This year for the first time, not only can you swap contacts with other participants, you can “klik” with your next summer book at the bookstore.
Having a badge in an event like C2 is really smart because it makes the network fun and addictive! This is the end of the traditional business cards exchange that makes you so ashamed because your card is so 2012 and with the wrong information.
- The different formats
Everything is done at C2 Montreal to deploy collaboration, diversity and conflicting confrontations of minds as a wealth. What makes it possible is the variety of the interventions you may experience.
This variety is key to generate spontaneous meetings and to develop a large ecosystem.
- Large conferences where personalities make inspiring talks with live retransmission in the Agora (an open amphitheater where conferences are broadcasted in live).
- Master Classes where business people are interviewed to share a conviction or an innovation.
- The Aquarium, an experimental live-broadcast radio space featuring compelling conference speakers.
Let’s be honest, you will probably never meet anyone in this kind of conference, but you will definitely have something to say to your neighbour at the ends of the talk. Who knows what might happened?
What makes the difference
- The Labs which are divided into 5 special places where you can try out a new way of thinking — with a hypnosis session in a yurt for instance.
- The conversation market, where you can create new multicultural group only by responding to questions and following the light on the floor
These 2 formats are specifically made to trigger your curiosity and to provoke serendipity meetings. The all point of the Labs are to put your in an uncomfortable situation with people you do not know, but who are as much curious and risk-taken as you are. So your first instinct is to speak with them about the experience, to share with them your feeling. And that is how you create a specific link between you and the other people. People you met in the labs or in the conversation market, you will definitely remember them because the situation was so special, funny or uncomfortable that you build strong link with people. And you know these people are in the same mood of you because they had accepted to participate in this crazy experience, just as you. These people may not be directly related to your business but you know for sure that they have a specific mindset, they are risk-taken and curious and eager to experiment crazy things, and you need this mindset in your work team to boost your projects.
- The collaborative working sessions
There is no better solution than collaborative work to innovate and meet the right people at C2. The majorities of the workshops are thought in this direction: an expert proposes a subject that he or she wants to develop with participants. As a participant, you learn from the expert not you also do something concrete with the information you just learnt. Collaborative workshops are made to exchange ideas, tests concepts and create new services or products with people you don’t know. “You’re not only going to learn,” says Dave Lank, C2’s content researcher for collaborative experiences. “You’re going to do something new with this information, put it to the test and take it to work with you the next Monday morning.”
During the collaborative working session, you not only work with random people, but you also learn from them. These workshops are great opportunities to learn to work with different people from different business or industries and at the end you realize that you have been able to work together on the same subject. These collaborative exercises are capital. You meet people with great ideas and you work with them. You learn new exercises based on design thinking and you use tools which can actually truly accelerate your own business project. In fact, you are just creating an ecosystem in real time for your business and you may not even realize it.
By mixing collaboration and action, these creative workshops provide participants new actionable tools, ideas to add and an ecosystem to their own business.
- The Braindates
Braindates are definitely one of the best — and most popular — tools at your disposal for making the most of your experience at C2.
Powered by e180, a Montréal-based company, Braindates is all about promoting peer-to-peer learning. Although essential, networking isn’t everyone’s strong suit. For some people, networking is painful when comes time to strike up a conversation with a perfect stranger. Others feel very comfortable and shine at this exercise. But at an event where thousands of passionate people come from across different countries and industries to meet and share, not networking is missing a true opportunity.
“I hate networking, but not at C2 (…) I spoke to dozens of business people. And to me, each of my questions is a creative conversation that has as much value as a visual output on any given project.” Says Trevor Hubbard in this article“Endless Opportunity and No One Has It All Figured Out, My Key Takeaways from C2 Montréal 2018”
That is why Braindates are made for. Braindates remove the barriers of networking and make very simple and meaningful connections between participants.
Concretely, Braindates are either one-on-one or group meetings between participants based on what one can teach or wants to learn. You do not people because they have a specific job or because they work in a specific company, you meet them because you want to learn or share something. Having the opportunity to meet people only based on what you can teach them or learn makes the difference because you will only have qualified connections. What is the most impressive with Braindates, is that you could easily find yourself in a conversation with amazing people who you would never have thought of talking to develop your business but who turns out to be really interesting. Imagine yourself talking with a innovation director, a reporter and an digital artist, talking about tech or IA.
How does it works?
- Few weeks before the event, you log on the Braindates platform.
- You list all the topics you are interested in or you want to learn about.
- Your propositions go on the Topic Market trough Klik (mobile app event)
- People ask you for a date by proposing 3 slots.
- A few minutes before your meeting you meet a “expert matchmaker” who will introduce you to the person who booked the date with you.
- And that’s it.
What you should remember
The Labs and the Conversations Market are two new formats that we never experienced before with Makestorming, so we definitely keep these experiences in our minds to make our own sprints or event different.
But what strikes us the most is how C2 has reused classic meeting moment such as the collaborative working session or the networking dates into a perfect experience to network with the right person at the right moment.
You are in a rush time? Let’s meet at the bar and Klik — “I’ll contact you later”.
You are shy? Plan a quick Braindate on a subject you feel comfortable.
You want to make something concrete and talk business? Go to a collaborative workshops.
You want to live a crazy time and meet creative people? Try a Lab — you never know what is going to happen there.
You want to meet a real expert and learn from him/her in a private talk? That’s why Braindates are made for.
You want to meet a company in particular? Participate to a private session.
Collaboration and meeting inspiring people in the right conditions is key for business innovation. But the most important is to make it happen at the right moment, with the right environment and the right tools and this is why C2 is the best worldwide event about Innovation and creativity.
C2 has succeeded in offering different meeting moment which fit with all personalities or objectives.
Thanks reading and thank you to the C2 Team who did an amazing job during the event. It was a great pleasure to work with you during the collaborative workshops and it was an honor to be here this year with you to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of Makestorming Canada!
Makestorming reinvents ways of working by putting human and collaborative work at the heart of the companies.
We design Sprints, distribute tools and provide training. This enable transformation while releasing the full capacity of teams and individuals
