Do you meet new people at work often? Do you think your meetings could start better? If your answer to both these questions is “Yes”, read on…

Needless to say, a good first meeting is the key to subsequent meetings. This means, your first meeting is really important and you cannot do enough to be prepared. When I have a meeting scheduled, I tend to check out the LinkedIn profile of the person on the other side of the table.  LinkedIn does tell me a few things – skills & expertise, companies he/she has worked with, education and so on. But, it falls short of giving me tips on how best to begin my meeting with the person.

Pugmarks.me is my friend here. Pugmarks.me is a chrome extension that understands my context and gives me relevant information. Since I have Pugmarks.me installed, it knows when I visit a LinkedIn profile (that’s context). Pugmarks.me kicks itself into action and brings me two things:

• News and articles about the person
• News and articles that interest the person

Let’s say I have a meeting with Guy Kawasaki. Guy Kawasaki has worked at multiple places, including Apple, before he ended up at Motorola mobility (now part of Google). He is an advisor to multiple companies. He is also an author, investor and entrepreneur. All this is available on his LinkedIn profile. When I open it in my browser, here is what Pugmarks.me had to say…

Pugmarks.me suggested a few articles – on Apple, on Garage Ventures and on Proximity Sensor IP battle between Motorola and Apple. These articles are ideas to start my conversation with Guy Kawasaki – I can talk about applications of proximity sensors for one and how it is impacting Motorola or about the kind of companies that Garage Ventures likes to invest in. For my first meeting with him, these tips are valuable. They serve as ice-breakers and help me start the conversation on a good note. More often than not, meetings that start well, end well.

Let’s take the example of another person in the news Michael Dell. Dell was recently in the news for being bought back by the founder Michael Dell himself. Pugmarks.me makes no mistake in bringing up this piece of information to the fore. Pugmarks.me also brings in more information on business erosion at Dell. Hint: Sometimes knowing what you should not be talking about is as important as knowing what to talk about.

What more? Pugmarks.me serves these ice breakers even when I have not logged into LinkedIn. And moreover, the person I am meeting need not be a user of Pugmarks.me.

The next time you need to meet someone, just give Pugmarks.me a try. You will be pleasantly surprised at what we bring up.

Aditya,
Co-founder, Pugmarks.me