- [Narrator] Bored of the same old conferences and events? Still need to network? Never fear. I am here to whisk you off on a whistle stop tour of five novel ways to network. Ready? Here's our first stop now. 

Unconferences. So you've probably been through lots of conferences but how about an unconference? These are unstructured events with no agenda, no keynote speakers, or topics. At an unconference the event is shaped and driven by participants. They're all about having purposeful conversations. A series of breakout sessions give people the opportunity to connect and innovate. 

Our next stop is Sweatworking. The healthy approach to networking. Here you exercise while you chat with colleagues, clients or other contacts. Choose an activity that's not too demanding though. Anything that involves a lot of physical exertion means you run the risk of not being able to focus on your networking conversation. I see you've worked up quite a sweat. 

Luckily, our next stop involves some refreshments. We've come to a tweet-up, a face to face meeting of Twitter users. They usually haven't met in person yet but have exchanged tweets or met through mutual Twitter friends. Get involved in local tweet-ups by searching Twitter using the hashtag for your city name along with #tweetup and look out for tweet-ups at any big conference you've got coming up or you could consider hosting your own. 

Put that cake down. It's time to move on. Ah, smart badges, a really cool way of connecting with like-minded contacts at networking events. Before the event attendee's answer questions about why they're attending, who they want to talk to, and what they want to talk about. Their answers are loaded onto a smart badge worn on their lanyard or jacket. Then radio frequency identification technology locates people with shared interests and alerts them when they're in close proximity to each other. Kind of like online dating. Isn't technology great? 

Here's our final stop. Volunteering is a great way to meet like-minded people while helping others. Lots of local charities rely heavily on community involvement. So consider volunteering in whatever capacity you can, marketing, promotion, fundraising, project management, or even as part of the board. The possibilities are endless. 

So there you have it. Five novel ways to shake up your networking unconferences, sweatworking, tweet-ups, smart badges, and volunteering. Why not give one of them a go? © 2022 Mind Tools by Emerald Works Limited.