Sunday 8 May 2011

N2N

Slack, slack, slack I can hear you think or that may just be my inner critic...  It is and it isn't slackness per se. Writing a blog is hard work in some ways. The regularity police can be relentless. There's a film, the title of which escapes me at the minute, in which a woman is so committed to her blog readers that she feels compelled to continue blogging throughout a live-threatening illness. 

I felt strongly that I had to keep up my blogging whilst traveling. Am clearly less pressured now that I @ home ~ the concept of 'home' is a whole other chapter. Be that as it may, the last week or so have been about networks. Re- evaluating, (re)building, and in some cases, even (re)moving links or obstacles to networks.

Networks have intrigued me for some time ~ ad nausea if you care to delve into the read. As I continue to action research the concept, I find that we are now past mere network creation ~ think Facebook or LinkedIn. Soon the world will no longer care how many friends or business contacts you have, but about the quality and value of those contacts. This is tied to the fact that we are reaching the point of network-to-network (N2N) integration. And you wouldn't want to associate yourself with a bunch of slouches now, would ya!

Network integration brings together place and space. How N2N integration will play out depends entirely on the network itself ~ on its cohesion, position (and yours in it) and local-global linkages, the level of trust and engagement with and within the network, and not in the least, if and by whom it is governed. 


It's a local global business pleasure public private event and all about trust and reciprocity! And more than anything, it's a gr8 opportunity to start linking all those women networks to enable feminized markets. But haste slowly as the saying goes. This is about longer term partnerships, about linking wisely and strategically. Said a learned source next to me @ a social media workshop last week, the next step is all about being a 'trusted authority'. Made sense to me.

Stay tuned..