In September, I attended four business and networking functions. At each event’s registration desk, I picked up my pre-printed name badge, or scrawled my name (or Twitter name) on a sticky label with a felt.

Here we are, it’s almost 2010, and I’m still squinting to read bad or small writing on navel-level or chest-level badges (which seems quite lewd when you think about it).

The applications that I’ve seen that come closest to doing away with name tags are the 2-D barcodes offer by ScanLife and the iPhone app Bump.

If you go to my Contact page, you’ll see a ScanLife 2-D barcode. If you want to load my contact information into your phone, simply download the ScanLife application, point your phone’s camera at the barcode, and voila, my contact information is in your address book. You can customize what information is coded into your barcode when you set up an account on the ScanLife site. I printed my barcode and put it on my name tag at one event, where it got some comments and questions. I’m considering printing it on a t-shirt for future events.

Bump allows you to exchange contact information with another iPhone user by literally bumping, or touching, your iPhones together.

Both applications help facilitate the exchange of information. But here’s a thought.

My kids love Pokemon. If you’ve ever watched the show, you’ll have noticed the trainers rely on a Pokedex for identifying Pokemon.

When the show’s characters encounter a new Pokemon, they simply whip out their Pokedex, which instantly identifies the Pokemon and provides its detailed description.

Now this kind of device might have “civil liberties violation” written all over it, so it would have to be completely voluntary. And there’s an element of Big Brother-tude if you knew someone was pointing a device at you to find out who you are. Not the perfect solution by far, but perhaps an idea someone can run with.

But if you know of a name tag or badge that doesn’t involve a pen and label, I’m all ears (and eyes, because my prescription is quite high).

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 12:46 pm and is filed under Social media.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.