I had a hard time trying to figure out where I should write this article because it is a short wrap up of my recent trip to Podcamp Boston and describing an experiment I was conducting there. The experiment part is a very green idea which could fit well on the Green Buy Guide but is more techie focused with a green side effect.

Before attending Podcamp Boston 3 I made the specific choice to do two things. One, do not bring a laptop with me for a slide presentation. The main reason is that I have not mastered the fine art of balancing graphics with my speaking points so my slides are WAY too wordy. I wanted to gear my session as more of a discussion and less of a presentation. All in all that worked well but I am hesitant to find the audio of it because I feel I may sound, well, odd.

My second choice was to not bring any business cards. As it turned out I had a couple in my wallet for the company and the podcast but they quickly left me soon after arriving at the conference. It’s not that I hate business cards or recognize their place in the world. Rather, I feel that there has to be a better way to convey the information on a business card to a person besides handing them a slip of paper they may or may not read.

This goes back to a talk Mitch Joel gave a year ago at Podcamp Boston 2 where he clearly stated not to give him a business card because 99% of the time he doesn’t follow up due to time constraints. I am still looking at business cards I have from the PME in 2005 that I should do something with but won’t. This is all good information on people that should be captured and tags in a way so that if I ever need a guitarist for a show I can quickly find them.

My proposal, find a way to create an open Business Card standard that works with the web, media devices AND phones. This would go way beyond the vCard idea. Basically it would be some sort of XML standard that can be quickly used with SMS/TXT messages to send business card data from a mobile phone/device to another device which would automatically recognize it and do something with it.

The idea would play out like this. I meet someone at Podcamp and instead of giving them my business card, I SMS them my XML based business card which is already pre-stored on my phone. Their iPhone gets the message, recognizes the standard, and based on the person’s preferences the device places my information into their contact list, categorizes them as “business contact”, downloads the image from my card and connects it with the new contact. The unique play would be that since it is an XML standard any phone or device can read it and use the info how they see fit. Also, it would allow application developers to create software to manipulate the data in ways the user needs. The green sideline is that less business cards would be passed around and fewer trees would need to be used to create business cards in the first place. It also would allow for the traditions of passing business cards in the Far East to be maintained. Instead of passing a card between parties they are hitting send on their mobile device to the recipient across from them.

Mobile phones and devices have been completely absorbed into all aspects of business and social gatherings. So we should be using them more to make lasting connections with people we meet and not let by a piece of paper and time to input information be a barrier to social contacts.

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