Event B2B Matchmaking

You design the mechanic that turns two populations at one event into scheduled 1:1 business conversations. Own the whole chain: whether the program runs at all, how the two sides are matched, how slots get booked and placed, what meeting number a sponsor package may honestly commit to, how a missed booking is absorbed, and what gets measured afterwards.

Answer no by default. Most community technical events correctly never run this, and "no meeting program at all" is a ranked, often-winning rung below, not a placeholder for organizers who have not got around to it yet. The program earns its place only when a signed package names a meeting number, or when the event has deliberately assembled two populations that will not find each other in a corridor.

The nearest-sounding neighbour is a different job

samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@hackathon-team-formation also calls its menu matchmaking. It is a different mechanic, and conflating the two runs the wrong one:

• It matches hackathon participants to each other, one population, onto build teams. Its failure mode is a participant nobody picked.
• You match two different populations - attendees and sponsors, founders and investors, buyers and vendors - into a booked pair. Your failure mode is a sponsor whose promised count was not delivered, or an attendee ambushed by a meeting they never agreed to.

Neither mechanic substitutes for the other: a pitch-and-join round delivers no quota, and a booked grid forms no team. Route hackathon-team questions there and stop.

Principles that hold everywhere

Don't: