New in the US App Store for iPhone, Refresh parses your calendar for the names of people you’re meeting and then compiles as much information about them as it can.
The information is gathered from social media sources in much the same way that you could and perhaps do yourself. Mynd does the same thing. But Refresh feels like it digs deeper and then it makes certain connections. Small but smart things: it will see, for instance, that someone’s Linkedin profile says they joined a company in 2010 but it will tell you they’ve “…been at Acme for nearly four years”. A tiny difference but one that more fits how we might think of someone or how we might phrase it if we opened a conversation with them.
That bothers me a touch. On the way in to a meeting, it’s working to prompt you with things you might need to know about folk. It feels a little bit icky and especially so when it directly suggests conversation-starting topics related to their previous employment, their holiday or whatever.
Personally, my only conversation-starter is “Hello”.
But I am ferociously interested in people. It’s exciting meeting someone new and up to that conversation prompt, Refresh is good. I like the name: it’s really refreshing my memory of whomever I’m meeting.
Any time you dig too deep or you make, I don’t know, intense briefing notes about their pet dogs just so you can appear matey or chummy in future, I am uncomfortable. Embarrassed. Yet when you meet a lot of people and they are all doing work that you really want to know more about, it’s not an awful idea to make the odd note.
Recently I’ve been adding just a line to the Notes field in my OS X Contacts. I might say what we’re working on together. There was one woman whose husband’s name would simply never stick in my mind so I did write that down.
Refresh wants you to do more and it prompts you to do so.
I got a push notification on my way out from a thing today and it’s still on my Notifications list as illustrated here in by far the most blurred-out screen grab I have ever taken.
I don’t like the line “What’s worth remembering about…” because the answer is EVERYTHING.
Still, if I wanted to, I could note that this fella was doing that work, this woman was doing that other work. And actually there was a fella today who is now doing a gig that he told me when we met back in November. If I’d made a note then, I might have remember to book a ticket in time.
So Refresh is very useful and it has some smart ideas that it has implemented well. I think it’s usefulness is directly tied in to how you think about people you meet and what you feel about briefing yourself this much.
It’s a free app so you can try it out very easily – but only if you have a US iTunes Store account. I asked the company and they confirm there will be an international release but there’s no date yet.
If you have a US account, you can find the Refresh app here. And whether you do to not, you can read more about it and the company on their official website.