Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Networking in Internet Age: First Gathering of German Expats in Shanghai

If you are an executive or a business owner, I bet that more than 80% of your success is dependent on your capability of networking. And networking is made extremely easy at the internet age. Here an example.

The group German Expats in Shanghai (/https://www.xing.com/net/shanghai-de/) was created Dec 15, 2008 with the networking tool XING (https://www.xing.com/). Today, three and half months later, there are already 913 registered members. The group had the first gathering March 1, 2009, in Bund Brewery, 11 Hankou Lu 汉口路11号 with around 100 people. All the registration and organization was done online. So everyone could know who else were coming with full details of their profiles, what they offer and what they are looking for.

My personal experience: I spoke with a lot of people there and decided to explore with two people for future business cooperation. I had recommended one person who is looking for a new opportunity to a company which is searching for talents with her profile. This is all because I had some online communications before the dinner. You can call this efficiency.

By the way, the location was very nice and the food was acceptable (except the quantity could be more, probably the restaurant owner was not aware, how much a German can eat, namely always the double size :-). But this was compensated by the free flow of beer, as German people consider beer as food.

Big thanks to the moderator of the group Martin Hackl, Comberry Ltd. and team who organized the wonderful dinner (also for creating the group before - online). Look forward to the next gathering, hopefully very soon.

3 comments:

  1. tja, and I didn`t come! But you know, there is not only an Shanghai Expat community on xing, internations has such a community, too! And for me it is already too much. Otherwise I am a musician and want to meet other musicians. But there are not so many musicians in such kind of communities....may be next time I try to come, but thats not a promise.

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  2. Thanks, dievommond, for your comments. I would appreciate, if you, as a musician, can come next time to make the group more colourful and well rounded. After all, there are a lot of people who are interested in music. I met a new friend there, who plays guitar too.

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  3. I'm wondering how the https://www.xing.com/net/shanghai-de/ could be spread so efficiently, maybe you can share some experience?

    Cheers,

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