How well does Pathable work as an event network?

Here at Gnomedex everyone is wearing a big, colorful badge designed to match people up with like-minded others wandering through the hallway.

These badges are courtesy of Pathable, the group running the event registration and behind-the-scenes social networking that comes attached to a Web 2.0 conference nowadays. So the question is: does it work?

In real life the badges are cool

I like the badges. I know some people have trashed them in the past, but I like the large names (easy to read, which means it’s easy to cheat and greet people by name).

I talked to Jordan, the CEO of Pathable, about how the badge design has been happening and where it might be going.

They’ve already run a contest on badge design to try and find something new and unique, which turned up some interesting possibilities, like a badge emulating a milk carton. On each side of the 3-d badge would be a person—like the lost kid ads on the sides of a real carton—that you are supposed to try and find while you’re at the event.

These are cool and inventive ideas, but I think the real innovation in badge design will be when real digital integration happens. When you can use your cell phone to read a bar code, or a web interface where you can type in a quick, 3-digit code to add contact info to your address book, that is when we’ll be really moving forward with the physical badges.

Everyone is on Twitter

Gnomedex is probably not the best conference to showcase Pathable’s networking features. Not only are most us attendees already on Twitter (look at how many tweets are there), but Lockergnome has a ridiculously active chatroom already fully operating, which is why the Pathable chatroom is basically empty.

I think the coolest function is probably the “conversations” section, which looks like this:

Basically, it’s a twitter-like message feed tied in to the attendee community (it does not, however, seem to have the same character restrictions). It’s getting more use than the chatroom, and again, I think it might be a more powerful tool for a less web 2.0 audience.

The follow-up

Of course, this is all well and good. Helping conference attendees meet in real life is a great function of network-based registration systems, but I find myself really looking forward to having this social network available to me after the event.

Collecting and handing out business cards is a pain in the butt.

I like the idea of being able to go back and connect with people I may have missed, or met only in passing. That may ultimately become the real value-add from Pathable and services like it.

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