Stacks of Business Cards

I never toss other people’s business cards.

Well, I shouldn’t say never. I shred duplicates. But I have stacks and stacks of them. They look like this:

That is just 1 stack of the many hundreds of business cards I’ve collected over the years. (You know, I just realized: When someone asks me if I collect things, I shouldn’t answer “No.”)

I feel guilty tossing these little rectangles of cardboard out (I’d shred them first if I did), but I don’t do anything with them either. The cards are usually handed to me at a tech or journalism/writing event with a vague implication on how and when to use it. Hence, I don’t use it at all.

This has led me in my own practice to almost vehemently refuse to give out my own physical paper business card. Instead, I offer to send a vcf (which had some technical difficulties at WordCampUS this year, but I digress) so my information can go straight into someone address book. Guess what, though? They never use the digital info either, just like I don’t use the printed stuff.

Since I’m resolving to write more this year, including blogging, I was thinking it would make a fun project to call every single one of these people and ask them what’s up in life. Once I think about it, though, that would be a major undertaking.

What do you do with business cards?