PairUp matches business travellers headed to any destination.

How it works? Members start by uploading their current contacts from Outlook or other contact management tool they use, and can build their network from there. When planning a trip, users enter their travel data: departure and arrival dates and cities, and if relevant, the trade show or conference they’ll be attending. They can then select the contacts they’d like to track or meet up with: people in the destination city at the same time, those attending the same event, flying on the same day, or working for a specific company or in a particular industry.

Before you book your next trip, check Top 10 Business Travel Gadgets and get it cheaper and upgraded with Travel Tips & Tricks.

When companies experience organizational pain, their first response is often a structural fix, such as decentralizing, breaking down silos, or shifting to a matrix organization.

* Many such efforts have only limited success because formal organizational charts mask the invisible networks that employees use to get things done.
* Investing time and energy to understand networks can help companies measure the effectiveness of major initiatives and make organizational changes stick.
* In many cases, a key to success is focusing on “brokers,” who serve as bridges across a number of subgroups in a network and are easy to overlook because they occupy the “white space” of organizations.

Read the complete article by subsribing to the The McKinsey Quarterly

As our personal contact database increases, it becomes a challenge to manage. Here is my 2 cents on how to create a well functioning personal contact management set-up for your private use:

- Install Plaxo + the Outlook toolbar
- Create a Linkedin account + install the Outlook toolbar
- Use Outlook to its full extend. Check the presentation “Outlook Features for Contact Management - 7 Steps to Success“
- For quick overview of contacts directly in your inbox install “Priasoft Outlook Contact View Add-in for Outlook“

With this set-up you will gain a quick overview of a contact directly in your Outlook Inbox view and automated update functions combined with easy to import/export/update/edit contacts.

Share your contact management solution by making a comment.

Have you ever accepted an invitation for an event and then just few hours before, something comes up and you can’t make it. Now you are in trouble, because how are you going to explain this to the person who invited you, and still be cool? Mr. Tannebaum gives some good tips on how to “Blowing Off An Event Without Looking Like A Complete Loser” Read the article here…

Having an updated contact list of everybody in your network is crucial to stay connected. Linkedin does a great job at enabling online networking and staying updated on where your contacts work, how their experience progresses and who is in their network. But one thing is lacking, and that is fully updated contact information. Plaxo is the perfect solution, and with 15 million users, it is a tested technology. Go to www.plaxo.com and sign up for a FREE basic account and get the following benefits:

- Update your address book when friends change their contact info
- Update friends’ address books when your contact info changes
- Sync your contacts, calendar, tasks, notes across Plaxo-enabled applications
- Get reminded of a friend’s birthday just a few days before
- Receive a Plaxo alert whenever a contact’s info has changed

And be sure to install the Plaxo Toolbar for Outlook, it works great. It keeps your Outlook and Outlook Express address books up-to-date. Install the Plaxo Toolbar on multiple computers. Syncs your address book, calendar, tasks and notes everywhere. You can build your address book from sent and received e-mail. Now, Plaxo members can detect AIM presence information from Outlook.

After you meet someone for the first time, you should immediately write some notes on the back of this person’s business card. It is important that you remember some key take-aways from your conversation. Things to write down could be the person’s birthday, family information, interests, or Website mentioned. Read more at networkinginsight.com (also check the comment below the article about Asia).