I've had to develop really good name & face recall for my work. I have probably a couple hundred or more names, faces, and short tidbits stored up in my head, and can remember at least temporarily just about everyone I want to at a conference or other.<p>1. First, look at the person. Remembering someone's name helps a lot if you can remember one thing about them. A lot of people don't have a very memorable face, but most people have something about them that's unique: do they stand with hips forward, wear velcro sneakers, have a beard, walk with a limp, have working-man hands, crow's feet next to their eyes, a specific hairstyle...? "That guy, Nick" becomes "That guy, Nick, who's tall and thin and has a really easy-going smile who holds his head back on his shoulders a bit and tends to wave his hands when he's talking." Now Nick's a unique person to you.<p>2. Listen to the person. Remembering someone's name is even easier if you can remember two things about them. Why are they at the event? What do you have in common with them? What gets them excited? Don't try to remember their life story, instead pick just one thing that stands out for you and associate it with the physical person and their name. "That guy, Nick, who's tall and tin and has a really easy-going smile who holds his head back on his shoulders a bit and tends to wave his hands when he's talking, especially when he's talking about Python. He does some geocoding work that I don't really understand."<p>3. If you really really want to remember someone, make contact with them. Not necessarily physical contact (like a handshake, not my favorite thing), but join in on the conversation, make eye contact, have a couple of words back and forth.<p>This also trains you to pay attention, and as others pointed out, inattentiveness is probably a big part of why it's so hard to remember people you've met. It's easy to just glance at someone and not commit anything to memory, and that's probably what happens most of the time.<p>Finally, when there isn't stuff going on, I'll spend a few seconds going through everyone in my head. If it's less than an hour since I've met them, I can usually work out any details I've forgotten. I have a kind of mental yearbook, and I go through it: "face & name & bio, face & name & bio, face & name & bio, face & ... blank? Wait, their name was Dave something, he liked embedded systems programming, he had a common last name, oh yeah, Dave Smith..."<p>It's the pop quiz effect: you're more likely to remember something longer if you've had to recall it at least once since committing it to memory.<p>edit: Oh, and don't be shy about forgetting something about someone! Being stressed out because you can't remember someone's name can make it a lot harder to remember the next person's name. And, odds are, they don't remember your name either, so being up-front about forgetting can put them at ease too. "Hey, we met just a while ago, we talked about ______, I can't for the life of me remember your name though."