I study small talk. Then I built a game for it.

I'm Brooke Gazdag. I'm a professor in Hamburg, and I research how people connect at work: small talk, networking, and who gets included when people meet for the first time.

One finding from my own research stuck with me. With two colleagues, I found that small talk before a negotiation paid off more consistently for men than for women. I take that as a reason to design the room, so the first sentence doesn't depend on who feels entitled to start it.

I run DisruptHR Hamburg, a morning of five-minute talks on the future of work. Every edition, I watched the same thing happen in the break: people stayed with the colleagues they came with.

Then AI changed what one person can build. Within reason, almost anyone can now make a simple product like this. So I decided to try: with everything I've learned from research and from running events, as a personal project, to see where it goes.

So I built Schmingo. Every square gives people a reason to walk up to someone, and a question to start with. Nobody has to invent the first sentence.

I'm a closet introvert. I'm often in front of a room and look like I'm having a great time, but that's very different from walking up to people I don't know and starting a conversation. Living across cultures and working in very different settings, I've found that getting into a conversation is a lifelong skill. In many of those rooms, I wished I'd had something like this to help me along.

Thanks for reading and happy schmingling!

Brooke · brookegazdag.com · LinkedIn

How I think about networking

• Small talk is how you get to a real conversation.
• Most people want to meet someone new. They just don't want to go first.
• A good event is designed to bring people into real conversation, however confident or shy they feel.

Built on research, constantly evolving

I'm a researcher, so Schmingo keeps evolving. I try new ideas in my own workshops and events, check them against the research, and keep what works.

Inclusion is one of my research topics and passions. I'm developing a bingo-based game that puts it at its center, so stay tuned. Anything new I develop or design becomes available to pass holders.

Speaking and workshops: I also run Schmingo myself, as part of a keynote or workshop on networking and small talk. brookegazdag.com

Schmingo is a personal project of Brooke Gazdag. It is not a service of Kühne Logistics University.

Research mentioned on this site: Ingram & Morris (2007); Epley & Schroeder (2014); Boothby et al. (2018); Methot et al. (2021); Huang et al. (2017); Shaughnessy, Mislin & Hentschel (2015), published under my former name.