Organzational speed dating as I originally envisioned it.

During my time as the first-among-equals (not really first by my choice, but more by consensus) co-officer of QGPA, we put on something that I called organizational speed dating (which wisely renamed the event “Building Bridges”). Basically, my original idea was to let a bunch of minneapolis queer orgs get up on stage and talk about their organization for a bit. Mostly so people could find out about interesting opportunities, but partly as a showcase for intra-community diversity. This turned into something resembling speed dating (hence my name for it) where we had people pick a table with one or two orgs (generally thematically related when more than one shared a table) sitting at it, and talk about it. And then they switched and went to second one after 15-30 minutes (I can’t remember any more, it’s been awhile) It went pretty well. I was surprised by the popularity of the religious orgs, but just goes to show how selective my own view of the world is.

Last night, I saw my original idea brought to life in a very different way. It’s the environmentalist happy hour (green drinks) for chicago. There are many similar regular events around the world and across the country, though I don’t know about the formats for the other groups. (check out http://www.greendrinks.org/) And 27 orgs came up and gave us their spiel in “2 minutes”. Some went maybe 90 seconds, some overstayed their welcome to 4 minutes, waxing passionate about the importance of organic farms, and how they really can be economically viable, and how this one person saved their family farm, to the disinterest of 90+% of the audience. The minority actually gave significant ways to get involved. All or nearly all, provided websites so people could find out more.

Seeing it put into practice helped me appreciate the flaws and advantages of the approach. Obviously different from the route we took. I would say the choice depends on your purpose.