On Oct 7, 2013, at 6:28 AM, Adam Moskowitz <[email protected]> wrote:

> With LISA '13 [1] right around the corner, I got to thinking about how
> "the cool kids" prefer to exchange contact information in a face-to-face
> setting. I'd appreciate it if you'd please take a minute or two to
> answer a few questions. Again, this is specifically about face-to-face
> interactions, typically with someone you're meeting for the first time.
> 
> 1) Do you prefer exchanging contact information by trading business
>   cards or some electronic-based mechanism?

Business cards.
> If you said "business cards," you can stop here.

And I'm going to disregard you entirely and keep going, as this is something 
I've been meaning to write on for a while now.

A QR code is like a joke, in that the larger the preamble, the better the 
punchline needs to be. In this case, the preamble takes the form of "Okay, open 
your QR code reader (you have one downloaded, right?), now take a picture… oh, 
that was out of focus, try again…" and the punchline is the data contained 
within that QR code, which at best is a phone number, email address, and/or 
twitter handle.

QR codes are far from ubiquitous; outside of geeky circles, they're not well 
understood, and require action on the part of the receiver to turn them into 
something useful. Handing someone a business card is well understood, trivial 
to implement, and something that everyone can grok, from kernel developers to 
my grandmother.

If I'm giving you my contact info, odds are I'd like you to contact me in the 
future-- inserting ANY unnecessary friction into that is antithetical to my 
stated goal, which is why I get slightly ranty on this topic!

-- Corey

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