Coffee with Strangers
Explore one of many networking initiatives organised by WoMen of Cisco in Poland.
Everyone is looking for inspiration!
At WoMen of Cisco, every day we are looking for new ideas to surprise our Cisco community again and again.
This time we were inspired by a 100-year-old tradition from Naples called Caffè sospeso – a kind of prepaid coffee by one person, so another one could benefit of it for free. Wonderful tradition, right?
We were in the middle of winter with daylight ending quickly, and during ongoing pandemic times. People were staying home, not seeing their friends; some of our Cisco newcomers had never met their Teammates.
We’ve decided to break this cycle of monotony! Our idea was to bring Cisco people together again!
Yet in a different format, where one person wouldn’t have any idea who the second person would be. We used Caffe sospeso as a basic, added a pinch of love and creativity and came up with “Coffee with Stranger” initiative.
Polish chapter of the Women of Cisco team managed to organize 27 coffee
meetings with 54 Cisco Poland employees in total.
Our first step was to find a cozy café, agree with its owner for having a table booked for Cisco only, at agreed time every day for over a month. Believe us, it wasn’t easy! One café only out of several contacted, did accept our proposal.
After little magic on marketing and communication, next step was our Cisconians to register for particular date (there were 2 slots per day only), meaning only two persons can meet at same time.
It took us another crazy amount of time to figure out how to organize registration, the way persons won’t see each other. As we really wanted to ensure people from different Cisco departments and with different background will have opportunity to meet.
Did it go well?! We believe so as we’ve successfully organized 27 coffee meetings with 54 Cisco employees meeting each other: Sales with Business Analyst, Consulting Engineer with Project Manager, Business Development Manager with Asset Manager and many more.
Most importantly, there was a bright and unique personality, a whole world behind each of those roles. And we are enormously happy we’ve managed to bring people from those different worlds together, allowing them to meet and learn from each other. This is our biggest reward.
We were extremely happy to get all those smiling faces in the photos and super positive feedback on the initiative! Thank you everyone who participated and thank you Cisco for giving us the chance to organize it!
Here are a few feedbacks from Cisconians on the initiative:
” It’s a great thing especially for employees like me, new in the company who has a team somewhere in the world and knows nearly no one from the Cracow office, so highly appreciated 🙂 “
—Marzena
“… it was so nice 🙂 super idea! I’m in the company only for 6 months so it is difficult to meet people in person! If there will be option for more coffee meetings put me on the list! ”
—Katarzyna
“This is a great initiative, I love the idea of meeting people from Cisco”
—Sara
Special big thank you to Mr. Taras – the owner of our magic meeting café Knitted Coffee, for his fantastic collaboration and for supporting our idea.
Mr. Taras – the owner of our magic meeting café Knitted Coffee
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