Comments on: Organize my work contacts.

Question: Organize my work contacts.

backseatpilot — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 08:24:56 -0800

I need some way of organizing the business cards I am suddenly starting to collect.

After being in the real world for a couple years and attending a few industry conferences and trade shows, I've got a small collection of business cards from people I've met. Right now they are in a pile on my desk, and I'm positive I've lost quite a few. So, I think I'm looking for two things:

-A neat way to store the cards themselves, probably on a desk or in a drawer
-A good way to organize the information on my computer. Preferably something portable (on a USB stick) so I can bring the information from my personal laptop to an office computer.

By: Daddy-O

Daddy-O — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 08:29:55 -0800

Try googling "business card scanner" if you haven't already.

By: Rosie M. Banks

Rosie M. Banks — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 08:30:34 -0800

I organize my paper business cards on a Rolodex on my desk. I staple the cards to the perforated ones that come with the Rolodex. This keeps them all nice and neat and alphabetized, and I don't lose them.

By: grouse

grouse — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 08:49:04 -0800

I type in the information into my PIM of choice (Palm Desktop in my case) and then throw away the cards. Why keep the physical pieces of paper?

By: zpousman

zpousman — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 09:06:36 -0800

I like paper. And I like cards. So I keep all of mine in a bigso box. They're in there in time order, which is not so good for some things, but since I mostly browse in the card library and I'm not doing a search for a particular card / person, then that's great. For cards of people that I actually want to contact, I put them in the computer. But I also keep the cards around...

By: cschneid

cschneid — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 09:38:23 -0800

On the computer side, if you don't mind retyping the data, you could look at highrise by the 37 signals guys. It's a great contact manager (plus it can store details about what you talked about if you type it in).

By: essexjan

essexjan — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 10:08:21 -0800

This. It's a mini-Rolodex-style organiser just for business cards.

By: essexjan

essexjan — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 10:10:12 -0800

Or a cheaper Rolodex-brand version from here.

By: amfea

amfea — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 12:04:04 -0800

I am not really in the know about computers, but I always see business card scanners listed in Skymall when I fly.

As for how to organize them without a computer, I have my business cards organized in something like a miniature photo album. It's a cheap plastic thing that I bought at a campus bookstore for five dollars, but it has held up OK.

By: Jasper Friendly Bear

Jasper Friendly Bear — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 12:20:20 -0800

From the Cool Tools website: low-tech biz card retrieval using the Poly Business Card Book.

By: bottlebrushtree

bottlebrushtree — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 12:57:32 -0800

I use a 3 ring binder and plastic business card card holders that fit in them I buy at the local office store. When put together it looks like the Poly Business card book mentioned above.

I put them in chronological order since it helps me keep track of when I met with someone, plus its a pain in the butt to keep reordering cards by any other order.

Does anyone really use the business card scanners? Every sales guy I know buys a couple and then they get shoved in the desk after a while.

By: invisible ink

invisible ink — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 14:15:11 -0800

Levenger has quite a few options - 1, 2.

By: sophist

sophist — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 04:11:10 -0800

Cardscan