How do you store your business cards?

No, sadly it isn’t.

https://agiletortoise.com/blog/2018/02/19/interact-removed-from-app-store/

Don’t delete the copy you have. I did, and I cannot re-download it from the App Store.

Thanks for the tip.

Too bad. It’s a nice little app. I use it a couple of times a week.

Perhaps he’ll incorporate the capabilities into drafts for Mac.

I don’t get many Business cards BUT as an Octogenerian I frequently go to different doctors and medical practitioners for a variety of reason and when I do I always pick up their card, take a photo of them and import the picture into a folder in Notes along with a list of medications I take and pin the folder in notes so that it’s always available without searching.

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People that still use business cars frighten me - for me it is very old fashioned and hardly happens to me anymore. Except when I am in Asia and then I am using a scanner (Business Card Reader) to have it on my phone.

But really, physical business cards :flushed:

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I also use CamCard. After taking a foto of the business card it is ocr-ed and sent to the contacts app. Works well.

Ok this is something that I have spent SO much time in. Mainly because I love gadgets so forget any phone photo solutions. At first I used CardScan. It was great until the company Dymo purchased it. Then the Mac software would not work. The CS although very nice was strapped with handcuffs to provide any solutions. I even wanted to buy another piece of software but that could not be done as it had to ship on CD only no downloads and I live in Thailand so not a viable option. Now I see that this product has been discontinued.

So I went on a quest to find an alternative and purchased Worldcard Card Scanner. I love this gadget and it munches up cards at a rapid rate. It scans both sides of the cards, does OCR and puts the items in fields. The MAC app makes it easy to use as a contact app and you can assign a category to each card. It saves a JPEG of both the front and back and export the database in many formats

image

So anyone who wants to have a nice little card muncher, I highly recommend the Worldcard Pro Business Card Scanner.

Here is a short YouTube video on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9dE2Vy0fP0

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I scan the card (scanbot) as a PDF into DEVONthink which OCRs the PDF. I can locate it almost immediately in DT.

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I don’t understand why I’d want to keep contact info in a non-contact manager.

I also use CamCard on iOS, which scans directly into Contacts, which then propagates to Contacts on Mac.

Google Photos scans business cards into the contacts app on iOS. And it’s free.

I like @Bmosbacker’s solution. Good to have an image of the actual card.

@bowline I am a journalist. I take notes on interviews and frequently include the subject’s contact information in the notes. When I do, I tag it “contacts” in DevonThink so I can easily find it later. I try to remember to add it to Contacts too, but often I forget. Redundancy – belt and suspenders.

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Never both! :wink:

I am preparing for a huge conference in ~3 weeks. Conferences are card-sharing parties. :smiley: Since I am also one of the key presenters, during coffee breaks, a lot of people will approach me.

My workflow is very analog:

  • just share cards. Takes 2 seconds and no app is faster.
  • if there’s some kind of follow-up (“Can you send me the data on…”), I just scribble some keywords on the card (“Send xyz data”).
  • after the conference/or in the hotel, I go through the cards
  • just a contact: throw away. As I already stated, finding contacts for a person today is easy enough.
  • go to all the follow-ups. I don’t enter them as tasks in Omni-focus, because it’s a waste of time. I would enter the task (“Send data to xyz”), just to mark it done. 90% of the tasks are just sending an email, so easily done. Then: throw away.
  • The few remaining ones (very important contact, task not done): OmniFocus and/or contact manager

Would you really not want to just say something like “Thanks, you can contact me and make requests via ‘asklars.com’”?

  • They send you their contact details.
  • There would no need to give or receive a card, risk losing them, have to carry them in a presumably bulging card pocket :wink:.
  • Full details (not just keywords) of requests arrive with their effort, not yours.
  • Put it on your last slide, etc. so you can distribute it to all attendees of your talk practically instantly and not find you have make space for cards, check you have enough before leaving, have the expense of getting them made up in the first place.

Just seems easier to me to not use cards in these circumstances and just distribute info in a way that is quick and easy for me, and puts the onus on the attendees who would want some of my time to provide the detail in a manner which requires zero effort for me.

:man_shrugging:

Put the effort on potential clients? Not really.

BTW handing out a business card is still considered proper business etiquette in many realms. I had a meeting with the CEO/owner of a pharmaceutical+board. Average age 70. You are expected to wear a proper suit, have card, never pull out a phone. Telling them to “look me up at the xyz whatever cloud service” would not only be awkward, it would be inproper. Same in banking, legal, etc. We`re not always dealing with geeky start-ups. The business card has been abandoned in some areas, but it is still very strong in others. As the suit. Nobody expects start-up guys to appear in a proper (dark, woolen) suit. But in other areas/businesses, it’s an absolute no-go to wear something different to a board meeting. Also, as I mentioned, device usage.

Also book calendars for clients: I consider them useless, but it amazes me how many people/partners/contacts still ask for them at the beginning of each year. So, we spend thousands every year to print them.

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“Would you really not want to just say something like “Thanks, you can contact me and make requests via ‘asklars.com’”?”

Yes, I would not want to do that because most of the folks who want cards don’t have anything with them to write down the domain name. Plus a lot fo folks spell it wrong and never find us so a card is important.

Mitch, one of the reasons why I use DEVONthink rather than a separate application for this purpose is it reduces the number of applications. I’m striving to minimize the total number of applications that I use. I believe this is usually, not always, more efficient then continuously adding applications. The more applications one uses the more stuff there is to keep up with. :slight_smile:

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Seems like there are a lot of people here who are not familiar with how the business world works. It’s surprising to find that there is someone who is “frightened” by people that use cards. Very strange.

Lars is right. Cards today serve a purpose and are part of long accepted practice. I tell my staff and associates to make sure and bring their business cards to business meetings or pitches, because you look like an idiot when you don’t have a few to hand out.

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I also tell my staff, but a few weeks ago I was the idiot because I forgot mine and was empty handed at the card-swap. Got the evil eye. Had my staff get some and made it up in the next break.

My redundancy is my in-house and BackBlaze backups of my Mac (andContacts) …plus iCloud. The alternative seems to be searching multiple places for a business card I might have scanned or not.

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I am based in Asia and although most everyone embraced the latest in technology. The exchange of business cards approaches the ceremonial equivalent of the tea ceremony.

Yes, indeed. I’m not based in Asia but make periodic trips. In fact, I have an upcoming trip to both South Korea and China. I always take my cards with me.

I’d purposefully not posted on this again as people seemed to be antagonistically taking issue with my assertion that business cards are an outdated way to exchange information that we should be moving away from. But it seems that people do want to discuss further. Permit me therefore to reiterate in what are, I hope, explicit and clear terms.

I’ve never doubted that people do continue to share cards. My point for discussion has been, and continues to be that this process is outdated, inefficient and there are surely more efficient ways to exchange information.

I get tradition. I live in the UK. Lots of history (particularly the city in which I live) and culture that informs lots of traditions. I teach a Japanese martial art… it is brimming with tradition. I get tradition. I dare say more than the average person on the street. But many traditions become outdated in terms of following them day to day in terms of how they fit with modern life and specifically in terms of efficiency.

The reference to a tea ceremony actually plays to my argument. If you wanted a drink at work how many of you would like to put things on hold to carry out a full tea ceremony? I have easily four or five cups of tea a day. Wikipedia suggests a tea ceremony can last up to four hours. Perhaps nice to partake in but not practical in today’s society for every cup of tea and certainly not efficient if you are trying to get work done.

Logically speaking, in today’s technology enabled society, are there more efficient ways that we should be potentially trying to embrace to increase the efficacy of efficiently sharing contact information with one another that surpasses the capabilities of a business card?

I believe the answer is yes.

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