One-to-one Meeting

Few months ago, I attended one Meetup organized by Ahmedabad User Experience Designers Meetup. It was more of formal conversation than presentation by Guest Hardik Pandya. The conversation touched topics including, how to convince stakeholder on what is best for both - user and developer, how to improve one's portfolio, suggestion on self improvement and last but not least, Setup a meeting with person who is top in your field. Guest suggested some points based on his experience, that is worth to consider. Here are they:

  1. Don't spam, be genuine: If you want to meet person, don't spam by sending continuous emails or DM on various social platforms. That doesn't work, instead send message with proper details including who you are, why you want to meet and so on.

  2. Ask for Introduction: If you want to meet a person and your friend or friend's friend know him, ask for your introduction. Ask your friend or friend's friend that you want to meet him. Again if you are genuine, it will work in most of cases.

  3. Be Human: If you setup meeting with person, be human! Don't be selfish and don't talk only about you. Make conversation happen and listen him.

  4. Have a couple of topics in mind: If you are meeting with person, have a couple of topics in mind. That will help with those odd silence moments.

  5. Do your research: Do a possible research on the person you are going to meet including his general interest, what things he like and what he particularly don't like. For example, instead of talking only about technical aspects, you might take conversation happen on other interested topics including cricket or football or politics or whatever that make person friendly to talk.

  6. Make them easy to meet: Finally, make them easy to meet. Don't tell, please meet me at cafe which is 10KM away from your office. Instead, tell him, I know you are working in this area and there is nice cafe which is just walking distance away from your office. Can we meet there?

I found this advice quite helpful. So, I thought why not share?


Rhett Trickett picture

Welcome Kiran and thanks for sharing these insights. One thing that I find helpful to consider is: What will the other person get out of meeting with me?

If someone takes time out of their busy day, to meet and help me, that's very kind of them. I might find that very helpful and get in touch with them again for help or guidance on another occasion. But if I continue to seek things from them without offering anything in return that is not a relationship they are likely to enjoy. I think if people can sense things are going to be like this before replying to a request they won't be so keen to reply or engage.

So, I find if I can offer the person some form of value in return, they are a lot more interested in that. Coffee or lunch is something they can easily get for themselves, so that isn't really valuable. Instead offering them knowledge they don't have or supporting a project they are working on is much more valuable to them. It's not always easy though to come up with something though! 😅