Ephemeral Social Networks: Capturing Proximity Social Networking at In-Person Events

Professional networking at in-person events plays a crucial role in career growth. However, many professionals struggle to maintain and transition these connections to online platforms like LinkedIn. Missed opportunities often arise due to challenges in tracking interactions, forgetting to add contacts, and the absence of tools that facilitate seamless networking. This paper examines how we can track those missed opportunities to connect with people from events by developing a protocol to find and record proximity interactions using Bluetooth while maintaining security and privacy of individual and device data, and then implementing that protocol in a proximity networking application developed for mobile phones. By bridging the gap between offline encounters and online professional networks, we believe that our approach enhances networking efficiency, ensuring that valuable connections made at events are sustained beyond the physical space.