Some months ago, I transferred departments at work. This left me in the odd position of working in a hallway full of people I hadn't met, even after working at this company over 10 years. At first, I figured I'd just naturally end up talking with everyone on the hall, since we must all walk pass each other multiple times a day. Nope! Nerds are good at avoiding eye contact and scooting into our own offices while avoiding socialization.

So, first I tried to walk around and look into people's offices to say hi. After two tours of the hallway at different times of day resulted in only finding two people, I was starting to feel like an awkward stalker. I resorted to looking at nameplates and then emailing my neighbors, using the online employee directory. I contacted a total of 10 neighbors and asked them to meet up for lunch sometime. Out of the 10, I had spoken to 2 of them before, and had been in large group gatherings with 3 others. Still, that's 5 never-spoke-to-before neighbors.

I picked 3 dates across the next six weeks, and asked everyone to select a date. I got them all nicely spaced out, 3 or 4 per day. Then the first lunch date rolled around, and everyone couldn't make it, except one person who then decided to defer until a more popular date. I was feeling like this idea might be a failure, but then a few of the people actually started saying hello when they passed by, so apparently just inviting people to get together was an effective ice-breaker.

When the second date rolled around, 2 out of the 5 people who'd signed up actually showed up. It turned out that the two of them had offices right across the hallway from each other, but hadn't really talked either. We went to the cafeteria and talked about ideas for potential projects, and our work history and interests. Slightly awkward at times, but generally pleasant.

When the third date rolled around, 2 out of the 7 expected turned up at the set time, and a third joined us partway through. Also, one of the folks from date number two happened to be passing by and joined the group. This conversation was a bit more random and touched on the intersection of popular culture (Groupon, YouTube, NetFlix) with scientific research.

Then, another person who had missed all three dates, stopped by randomly on a non-designated day, and invited me to go get lunch. We chatted about our current research project and places we'd lived before coming here, and I found out he's also interested in what sorts of off-label computer interface ideas might be supported with console video game controllers.

So a pretty good result, even though I didn't end up seeing all 10 people for lunch. I'll probably set up a few more dates, and invite the 4 remaining from the first batch, along with the other 5 or so people further along the hallway. I can't say that I developed a deep and significant relationship with anyone after a single lunch encounter, but I feel like the general level of pleasant friendliness in my corner of the hallway has increased.

The funny thing about this task is that a couple years ago, I was talking to some coworkers in my previous department about innovation. There's some research around the idea that when you talk to people who are tangentially connected to you, it sparks more cool new ideas than if you'd just kept talking to the same group, or kept to yourself. Since cool new ideas are a part of our work, I suggested that maybe we should facilitate getting random people together from around the company for lunch. But people thought this would be too much outside of the normal comfort zone. So since that conversation, I've been curious about what a typical reaction to "hey, I work here to but I don't know you, let's get together for lunch" would be. Turns out the reaction is pretty much "sure, sounds like a plan".