Yesterday I went to one of those “speed networking” events—where a bunch of business people sit around a table and you get a few minutes to talk about your business.

All in all it was a good event for me - I ended up with a solid lead on a project, and a new contact at a local software development company that I’d like to do some subcontracting for.

As part of the event you get to pass your business cards around the table, and in return get the 12-14 cards from the other people.

Any time I get a business card from someone, I like to follow up with one of my custom postcards - just as a “nice to meet you” kind of thing.  My hope is that they like the photo well enough to tack it on their cube wall, keeping my business name within view.

Out of the dozen or so cards I received, however, 3 didn’t have physical mailing addresses.  Is this a new trend in the workplace?

Of those 3, one was a guy from a franchised printer cartridge replacement company, one was from a large bank, and one was a county employee. 

I can understand if you’re self-employed and work out of your house - so you’d have some security concerns or maybe just don’t want sales people showing up at your door.  In four and a half years however I’ve only had that happen once (and wouldn’t you know it - I was out in the garage welding on something when she came in..)

For larger businesses however, what’s the risk of putting a mail address on the business card?  Especially the printer cartridge place - why make me work to figure out where you are?

What say you - do you have a mailing address on your business card?