What is a braindate?

A braindate is either a video call or an in-person meeting with someone else. You should coordinate with the other person around the time you want to meet, then send a calendar invite with the details (including the address or Google Hangout link). Keep in mind timezones might be different. Braindates can range from 30min to 60min+. You can decide. See below for best practices and guidance.

<aside> 🎯 Goal: Grow friendships and share ideas within the Nexteen community.

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DON'T BE LATE! The biggest mistake people make is being late to a braindate or not showing up. Setup the meeting, send an invite using Google Calendar, then be on time!

There are 3 types of braindates:

#1) Meet

The purpose of a meet braindate is to get to know new people. There is no pressure to talk about what you've accomplished or how much you know in a specific tech/science. Instead, it's focused more on having a memorable experience and building new relationships.

Meet best practices:

• Have energy and excitement for the braindate! Smile! Show the other person you're looking forward to the braindate. This will start your braindate with good vibes.
• Play games; don't make it feel like an interview. Prepare 1 or 2 games before the braindate that you can play (recommendations below).
• Learn something interesting together, like a skill or a random piece of knowledge, like why fish wiggle around when they aren't in water.
• Keep in touch after the braindate. Send each other articles, videos, and/or funny things you think the other person will like. Check in with the person at least once/month.
• 🕑 Suggested time: 30-45min. End on a high note with energy. Be excited to talk again.
• Bring plenty of water, and high energy with you. Have your scheduled clear to go boom.

Meet Structure (Example):

1. Start with an ice-breaker. My suggestion is to play 2 truths 1 lie. It's simple and fun.
2. After the ice-breaker, play "10 common things". In this game, you have to find 10 unique things you both have in common with each other. The more unique, the better. Avoid things like "we both brush our teeth". Try to find common things/interests that not many other people would have with you.
3. Next, talk about what you're interested in. This includes problems you're interested in solving, specific tech/sciences, sports, music, art, acting, or anything else. Get to know what makes the other person excited. Note: if you already talked about this in the previous activity, you can skip this.
4. Suggestion: Play an improv game. Examples:
   1. Caption that GIF: go to giphy.com and send each other random gifs to make a caption for in < 10 seconds.
   2. Improv storytelling: Go to this website and generate a random image. Together, you will make a story based on a series of images. The first person starts the story with one image, then the next person gets a new image and continues the story based on that image and it goes back and forth.
   3. Rap battles: Find a beat like this one and have a freestyle rap battle. d. Play games on cosmos.video