Confession: I hate business cards. I have at least three different ones for my different roles—one for friends, one for my freelance work and one for my day job—and it seems like I never remember to have the one that I need in the moment when I need it. Worse, my old leather wallet bends the cards and imparts a dirt-scuffed layer of grime on the edges. Classy, right?
Is it surprising that business cards and sticky-label name tags still reign supreme in paper-eschewing Silicon Valley? That seems remarkably low-fi. I’ve been waiting for some alternative way of meeting and filing away new contacts and friends when I’m at an event or a big show, which is precisely why I was thrilled to find Wavework.
Wavework is an app specifically designed for connecting like-minded individuals at events, leveraging the collaborative power of communities. It takes the stress out of running out of appropriate business cards or the embarrassment that results from forgetting names or clumsily clicking through hundreds of “Jennifer Smiths” on LinkedIn to find the one that you met just yesterday. Wavework operates on a simple principle: it turns on only when you’re at an event that is using it, like a concert, a conference or a sporting event. When you meet people there, you can find them again on Wavework and add or remember them.
And here’s where it really differs from what you can do in the real world: you can find and message people whom you haven’t met yet from across the venue by browsing within the app. You can comment in real time about the Super Bowl half-time show or about who’s playing on which Coachella stage. (Yes, Wavework launched at the Super Bowl and will be at several upcoming events this year too.)
The best part about Wavework is how it mixes business with pleasure without creating the “Facebook problem”—you know, where you find yourself walking a line between the person you are with your boss and the person you are with your 12-year-old nephew, both of whom see your timeline. Wavework is specific to an event. You wouldn’t pontificate about Tim Lincecum’s shifting ERA if you were at a web-development conference. And you wouldn’t talk about MySQL at a Giants or Warriors game. Wavework solves exactly this problem and—best of all—ditches the geeky name tag that you always forget to pull off until some stranger on BART notices it and yells your name.
If you want to use or check out Wavework for your next event, go to waveworkapp.com, or download it from the App Store now.