You may find yourself living in a large network, and you may ask yourself... Well, how did I get here?

Inspired by my favorite Talking Heads song: "Once in a Lifetime".

We often wonder "how did I get here?" when we look around and reflect on our personal networks. Where did all these connections come from? Did I do all this? Who helped weave my network? What can I do with these connections? Where can I add more?

I will go through key growth stages of a network that evolved this past decade. Many of the connections have already resulted in creative collaborations. Other connections are just bearing fruit now. Networks are like that -- a new connection does not always bear instant fruit, sometimes the growing season for some links is very long. Yet at the end, the fact that the link is already established, an opportunity is spotted and acted upon using the resources that the link provides.

Many years ago the network looked like this. Two people are connected if they interact with each other as friends and/or colleagues. ONet represents a now defunct on-line group: The Omidyar Network. This was a gathering place to help people discover how they can make a difference.


People on ONet got to know each other from their on-line activity and Jerry introduced Tom to Valdis -- he closed the triangle amongst himself, Tom and Valdis.


Next, Tom introduced Jean to Valdis at a seminar he organized in Boston. Soon after that, Steve reached out to June after doing a web search on "network weaving."


In the next phase, June introduced Steve to Valdis to work on network mapping, and Valdis introduced June to Tom to speak at his next seminar in Europe. Notice as people start "closing triangles" via introductions, the original meeting place for a portion of the group -- ONet -- starts getting pushed to the periphery.


Next, Valdis introduces June to Jean to share similar interests and goals, and after working with Valdis on network maps Steve introduces Daniel, who is also interested in network mapping, to Valdis.


Finally, Jean meets Jerry at another event and the network as it stands today is now in place.


When we make introductions, and close triangles, we are not doing it to merely create new connections. Network weavers usually have a goal in mind when connecting two new people -- a project, a mentorship, a future collaboration. The links between Daniel, Jean, and Valdis were in place several years ago but only this year did they all collaborate around a common project. Jean and Valdis were working on thrivable networks and Daniel was organizing a conference around building networks to help inner-city kids -- all three were going to be in Chicago the same week. After a few emails it was agreed, Jean and Valdis would do a workshop on building thrivable networks @ Daniel's Tutor/Mentor Conference.

So, networks are built in many ways. First, by being in the same physical or virtual space, and second by active network weavers who make strategic introductions for the benefit of those they connect and for the benefit of the entire network. Networks are also activated in many ways. Sometimes by the initial introduction and connection to an immediate need, and other times, existing links need a little nudge to activate -- like an obvious opportunity. Our themes in the workshop will be:

• Know the Net - map the existing connections of your community/ecosystem
• Knit the Net - weave and support new connections, build a thriving network
• Nudge the Net - activate the network toward self-organization and action

Register here online and join us in Chicago on November 20th!

How did we get here?
Letting the days go by...
Many years of knowing, knitting and nudging.
Same as it ever was... Same as it ever was...

The Power of Network Weaving

One of the most interesting developments in the social sciences is the new science of social networks. This is the growing body of knowledge and practice about how organizations, communities, regions, industries, markets and geopolitics behave as networks of collaboration, learning, and influence.

One of the principles in social network science is that when people are better connected, they are more individually and collectively productive, cohesive, and resilient.

From a social network perspective, every social problem is a symptom of fragmentation in networks. Everything we call a problem today is a manifestation of unengaged citizens, siloed institutions, divisive politics, and fragmented industries. Few new possibilities can occur in a world of disconnections. When connections thrive, new possibilities thrive.

Where people are thriving in the world today, their social networks are the fabric of their thrivancy. When people are better connected in social networks, they become more of a community.

Social network sciences suggest that the most significant accelerator of network connections is the presence of network weavers in networks.

Network weavers are people who intentionally and informally - and often serendipitously - weave new and richer connections between and among people, groups, and entities in networks. They also weave new and richer connections between among networks.

This is not a new role; it is a role that has been around since the beginning of social introductions. Network weavers do three things.

1. They constantly learn about the assets and opportunities in the network. This includes the tangible and intangible, shared and isolated, well-engaged and unengaged talents, resources, funds, space, expertise, and knowledge available within the network.

2. They constantly learn about the dreams of people in the network. These are the passions inspiring what people are striving to create and pursue.

3. They constantly introduce and connect people with complementary dreams and assets.

Anyone can be a network weaver. It requires no specialized position, permission, personality type, or preparation. Network weaving only requires five things: intention, time, curiosity, the ability to make quality introductions, and a good connection with those they’re connecting.

Network weaving can happen in any media and geography - in person, online, by phone or text. It can be strategically planned or spontaneously improvised. It can take minutes or months.

A quality introduction is one where the people introduced are immediately inspired to get to know one another more, with a new sense of learning, collaboration, transaction, or alliance possibilities.

The power of network weaving is how it invites a culture of generosity that is the basis for all thriving networks.

The more network weaving happens in a network, the more people are connected in new ways. When people are better connected, they dream with greater courage, they share their assets with greater generosity, and they innovate with greater resourcefulness.

The divide between knowledge and asset haves and have-nots shrinks, creating a culture of trust and engagement rather than isolation and entitlement. People with common dreams scale their dreams thanks to wider and richer collaborations. People become more transparent and as a result, share a sense of responsibility for the well-being of the whole.

Through network weaving, we become able to create a common future different from the past.

Fireside Chat: Ed Morrison & Valdis Krebs

First of a series of chats on leading edge ideas in regional economic development with Ed Morrison and Valdis Krebs.



We look at how to find hidden opportunities in business lists. Valdis uses social network analysis and some simple data mining to derive the network of collaboration opportunities below from the list of 350 NE Ohio advanced energy companies above. How did he do it? Watch and listen to this 5 minute Screenr screencast!


Next week's chat will focus on Ed's work around ditching organizational charts.

The power of dreams and small acts

These are views from the rural economic development Summit June and I (Jack) facilitated last Friday. It was a great group and a fabulous time of learning and transformation. People did a great job of dreaming and translating dreams into small acts - cultural breakthroughs we expect to hear long term impacts from.

Weaving a Job Network

Recently Valdis appeared on WCPN - 90.3 FM, the Cleveland NPR radio station, on "The Sound of Ideas" with Dan Moulthrop. The program was about searching for a job when you are over 50 years old. Listen to the MP3 here [I am in the last 15 minutes]. Here are more details to the network weaving process that the limited on-air time did not allow me to share.

When is the best time to plant a tree?
20 years ago.

When is the next best time to plant a tree?
Today!

Chinese Proverb

What is true for trees, is true for networks -- build your network before you need it!

It is best to have been building and expanding your strategic personal network for all of your professional life. Unfortunately, most people don't come to that realization until they are let go from their current job.

Most people have small, dense networks composed mostly of their immediate on-the-job colleagues, friends and family. These networks are the first resource of the newly furloughed employee. Asking around, the job-seeker finds that immediate contacts often do not have much more job information than the job searcher has -- they are all in the same network neighborhood where everyone knows what everyone else knows at about the same time.


Once the job seeker exhausts the obvious job openings that s/he and their immediate contacts are aware of, they become stuck. What to do next? The common advice is send out or post resumes on-line, attend job fairs and start "networking". The first two suggestions get the job seeker onto the overcrowded freeway to the HR office. In today's recession, this route is a clogged artery with little or no movement -- time to get out of this traffic jam and try an alternate path.

The next suggestion -- "networking" -- sounds good, but is often approached wrong. Networking is commonly defined as quickly connecting with many people -- focus on quantity over quality -- sometimes mockingly called schmoozing. Building strategic connections is much different than just "networking" -- you build trusted relationships that bring you information and access that you currently don't have in your small circle of friends and colleagues. Quality trusted ties are like the trees planted many years ago. Quality trusted ties develop when people work on something together -- they don't develop over a handshake at a conference, a quick conversation over coffee or a speed interview at a job fair.

Networking may get you many new business cards, but are these people willing and able to introduce you to the hiring manager [the route around the clogged freeway]? If I just met you at a conference, or you called me out of the blue "to network", am I going to risk my professional reputation to introduce you to my boss or trusted colleague? Probably not. Yet, if you are introduced to me by a trusted friend, colleague or peer then I will listen and we will both benefit. Better yet, if we work on a volunteer project together, I see you "in action" and we bond -- I feel confident in recommending you.

Once you exhaust your inner circle of people who can make introductions, what do you do? Two things: 1) re-activate trusted ties from the past that are now dormant and 2) build new trusted ties via volunteering and part-time work.

Everyone has dormant connections that can be re-activated. Many people are now getting on Facebook and LinkedIn and re-connecting with former colleagues and college chums. Do so, but be careful. Do not re-connect with a transaction in your back pocket -- "Hi, nice to to hear from you again, do you know of any jobs?" I have a former colleague who re-connects with me every 5-7 years -- but he does so only when he is in the job market! He expects a connection, but is not eager to offer one of his own. Needless to say, he does not get far. Once you re-connect with one or two trusted ties ask them if they have remained in contact with others from your old social circle. You want to be expanding/re-activating your current network out 1 and 2 steps -- your contacts and hopefully their contacts. This will help you reach people with information about jobs you have not heard of yet.

A friend of mine, a job-seeking HR executive in Chicago, has done an amazing job of building her strategic network in the last year. She has hundreds of new connections with many of them being ties she built in prolonged interactions. She has volunteered on several projects in her field and has also joined several advisory boards. She helped organize several local HR conferences and meetings for the non-profit she works with and therefore has face-to-face work experience with a new cadre of colleagues. They have seen her in action, they like her work, her energy, they trust her, they even give out their personal cell phone numbers to be references for her! Like a tree establishing a root system, it has taken her a while to grow this strategic network, but it is now vibrant and ready to provide her with many opportunities.

In addition to job offers and business opportunities, a wide strategic network also provides other benefits. Health and happiness! When I talked to my HR colleague in Chicago this week, she did not come across as a person that had been out of work for a while. She was very upbeat and full of energy -- which comes across great in an interview! She was very positive because her network was growing and bringing results. She was meeting new people, sharpening her skills and learning new behaviors -- she was very positive about her future. More and more research is pointing to the health benefits of building social networks. Employers like to hire positive, high energy people.

Out of work? Form new ties -- not casual connections, but collaborative caring connections. They will bring you a variety of rewards. Also, when you start your new job, do not stop your network building. Keep expanding your network, make new connections in new places. Keep growing that tree, you planted, with wide-reaching branches.

"Only connect!
Live in fragments no longer."

Howard's End
E. M. Forster

Emergence Part 2

Here is part 2:

Emergence - Part 1

key to understanding self-organizing is the concept of emergence. Here is a nice video (via Lisa Kimball) in two parts.

Can we see self-organizing in our world?

I'm really finding BFI Book Group quite delightful. First, it's a good use of Ning, a free customizable social networking site, as a discussion forum. Might want to check it out to see how it works.

In addition, the quality of the discussion of The Invention of Air (by Steven B Johnson) is great. There's a new thread on Systems Thinking and Change that is fascinating. Saul Kaplan, who organized the Book Group, says

...systems level innovation is exactly what it is going to take to tackle the really important issues of our time including health care, education, and climate change.

But to get systems level innovation we need theory. Steven Johnson points out

...what we don't have is a convincing theory about the system that connects all these local innovations, that causes them to self-organize into something so momentous.

.

I think the theory is there, in the science of self-organizing systems and complexity. But virtually all of that literature describes everything but human social self-organizing systems: ecosystems, immune systems, termite colonies, etc.

Somehow we've created a culture and social system where the self-organizing capacity that termites illustrate so effectively has been damped way down. Our only path back to this birthright is to become highly self-aware of our natural capacity to self-organize.

We have to learn to see the self-organizing that exists in our lives before this broader theory can become social theory. As Steven Johnson points out in his excellent video, self-organizing is local, and we need to practice self-organizing in a way that enables us to build our self-organizing capacities: we need to gain new skills in listening and in working together and learn to reach out to those who are different from us in every way possible. As we do this, I think we will be shocked at the depth of creativity that is unleashed.

But as Johnson queries, how does all this little stuff become the stuff of transformation? I believe the magic of emergence can be assisted through networking structures (whether coffee houses or social media) that enable us to share deeply, and through processes that enable innovations to be woven together, to scale and make a difference.

Whither the Coffee House?

Saul Kaplan has set up an online book club on innovation. The first book we are reading and discussing is Steven Johnson's "The Invention of Air," which describes the coffee house culture of England and the U.S. in the late 1700's. Here are some of my thoughts about these places that were so crucial to innovation in that era.

Think about the coffee house - people flowing in and out with the frequent running into others and the chance to exchange and cross-fertilize one's latest spontaneous thinking, places for twosies to sit down and move the sparks that have been created into action, and groups coalescing around trending topics so larger stuff can emerge.

But the impact of traditional coffee house innovation is limited by class and geography. Little headway was made on issues such as poverty because no poor people ever made it in the door (except as unseen help). Social media is just now providing examples of how the web can overcome some of the coffee house limitations. One of the delights of Twitter is that you can create a coffee house peopled by quite diverse individuals from all over the world (I follow people from many countries and political persuasions) and, because you are overhearing all their comments and conversations, you can often find some opportunity to strike up a conversation and start to build a relationship with people you would never run into in this way in your ordinary life.

The difficulty, though, is reconceptualizing the physical place - a coffee house - as a set of innovation flows. Once you have a great provocative conversation with one or two people on Twitter, how and where do you move it so the energy and innovation continues to flow into action? I've now had a number of instances where the Twitter banter flowed into Skype calls/chats/document exchanges and then into face-to-face meetings or directly into some collaborative arrangement. The next missing piece is more support for small collaborations online. How do we keep track of all the small projects and what we are supposed to do for each?s

The Network Leap

The biggest network divide -- the one I think makes philanthropy so much less effective than it could be -- is the divide between so-called DONORS and BENEFICIARIES. I want to suggest that these terms are a little whacky.

I want to suggest that people who give money and people who have projects that need money need to rethink of themselves as a PEER NETWORK -- and that this small (but oh so difficult) step would instantly start a process of transformation.

First of all, people are doing fabulous, creative stuff out in communities. They are experimenting, working unbelievably hard, scrambling for resources to keep going. Philanthropists could learn so much from them about what works, what makes a difference - but how do they get a true picture of what is going on, because non-profits feel they have to make themselves look perfect to get money and so hide some of the most important information -- their mistakes!? How can positive community energy be identified and supported -- and be allowed to be imperfect, but held accountable for learning and making breakthroughs? What might happen if philanthropists stopped funding themes and started funding networks of high-energy groups that have or want to learn deep processes of innovation, collaboration and reflection?

But, by funding organizations rather than networks and projects, philanthropists take away the incentive to work with others, learn from others and get the kind of feedback that helps non-profits see the unproductive ruts they have slipped into.

The Viral Giving Network

An example of a Viral Giving Network was provided in two earlier posts about the Oxfam Savings for ChangeProject and Keys to Transformation and Scale. Women in the Savings for Change Circles spread their successful strategy for collecting savings and then lending to circle members to many other groups of women in their villages, thus increasing the impact of the project more than ten-fold -- at very little additional cost.

Viral Giving always includes training participants so that they can continue to spread the project. In Savings for Change, participants were given the framework of viral spreading ("You can spread this to other women in your village."), tools for spreading the project (a pictograph manual of how to run a savings circle), and basic skills and strategies to spread the project. Think about your projects: Are projects you fund something that can be spread? Or,do your projects have elements that could be spread (for example, the use of social media)? Do you suggest that spreading the project or elements of it are part of the project? Do you provide training in how these can be spread?

Video on Network Weaving

Thanks to the good folks at I-Open, especially Betsey Merkel, I'm sharing a 20 minute video on Network Weaving. This could be the first of a series, a tutorial on Network Weaving concepts and skills.

All I ask is that you provide some feedback: Is this useful? What about the length? What specific aspects of Network Weaving would you like to learn more about?

Transformative Philanthropy Network - the parts

In the next series of posts, I'll use examples to describe the 4 (maybe 5) sub-networks in a truly transformative philanthropy network. I'll offer a graphic that will show each part and then how they all fit together.

Part 1: The Viral Giving Network

Part 2: The Viral Donor Aggregation Network

Part 3: The Direct Donor to Recipient Network

Part 4: The Learning Networks

Part 5: The Engagement Across Divides Networks

You will see as each is described, the words that we use start shifting, opening up new possibilities.

Philanthropic networks

In the 2 previous posts I've been talking about philanthropists as if they were synonymous with foundations. In this post I'd like to deconstruct and reconstruct the notions of who is a philanthropist.

We have been blessed in this country (U.S.A.) to have many many foundations. However, these foundations, as was the case for businesses and government agencies as well, adopted organizational structures that were hierarchical and generally operated in isolation from other organizations. For the last decade, though, many entrepreneurial individuals and businesses have moved to an ecosystem model: they have vast relationships with other businesses of many types and sizes as well as with 'customers,' and they often operate through an ever-changing ensemble of of collaborative projects with others in their ecosystem. New product ideas, for example, are as likely to come from a customer or a microbusiness in another part of the world as from internal staff. Staff are often continually engaging with "non-staff" in a wide range of FTF and online venues.

Kiva.org is an example of how philanthropy can operate in this new ecosystem world. The site draws in new philanthropists (who are mostly individuals who have never considered themselves as philanthropists before) mainly through friendship networks, and links people directly to individuals who need loans. It is this direct connection - knowing something about the person to whom you are lending money - that draws so many people in who never donated money to an abstract cause. How could foundations see themselves as builders of networks that create these kinds of direct connections and engage many more people in philanthropic activities?

Kiva.org also has set up a structure to support the self-organizing of lender interest groups. More than 3000 teams help build relationships among the new philanthropists, expanding their understanding of and commitment to the larger initiative, thus setting up viral expansion pathways. In addition, kiva.org offers an internship program that engages individuals in tracking success and further weaving the network.

How could foundations and other more traditionally organized philanthropists see their role as supporting the development of a complex philanthropic ecosystem?

Policy networks

How can philanthropy assist in the formation of policy networks? I think the biggest mistake foundations make is that they often convene non-profits interested in a particular policy area and have them talk (often for months or even years), struggling to consense on a specific policy agenda which they then push forward as a group. For many intractable problems, though, this approach is premature, and often doesn't result in long term system change.

Why not start with the most basic system change and create a different set of relationships among all of those who care about some major problem or possibility? How can development of a policy agenda engage policy makers and policy influentials (Institutes, individuals, and media that people look to to shape discussions in a particular policy arena) from the start? Instead of immediately focusing on policy, could these key policy players become engaged with non-profits around experiments that help everyone learn what effective policy needs to look like for this area?

How could foundations and agencies see their role as creating policy networks that connect non-profits (both locally and with innovators around the world) and help them build long-term relationships with policy makers and policy influentials? Non-profits are all too often isolated from the experience of other non-profits that could inform policy recommendations.Too often they forge ahead with a massive change agenda with little or no experience from which to determine whether what they are suggesting will actually work or whether it has the flexibility needed to match the uniqueness of communities. How could they gain the skills needed for effective network building and collaboration that would support ongoing innovation?

What would policy look like that encourages collaboration and is flexible enough to allow creative adaptation to each community funded? I would love to see policy-mandated funding be based on the Innovation Fund model: the first round of policy sets up seed funds available to many collaborative projects, each made up of small groups of organizations interested in exploring a specific innovative approach through collaborative action. Well facilitated reflection sessions encourage the seed projects to explore what they learned about this policy terrain as a result of their innovative experience. Policy-designated funds are then available for new, larger collaborative projects that are thoroughly tracked to develop the key "patterns of success." Larger scale policy is then developed based on this learning and experience.

Looking forward to hearing about your experience and thoughts!

Providing support for learning/policy communities among "grantees"

My first suggestion to enhance philanthropy is for foundations or philanthropists to be trend and energy seekers. Rather than have lengthy planning/priority sessions, why not have the program staff (and board) call people they respect (and then some random names from the non-profit, grassroots community) and ask them what they think are the most exciting projects, directions, organizations and individuals working in communities? As a result of listening, the foundation will quickly find out where the energy is, so that they can support, enhance and scale that good energy.

The first step in enhancing already emerging energy is to encourage and assist those energy centers to enhance their networks. I remember one very nice foundation that decided, after much internal study, on a focus for their grantmaking. They made a request for proposals from organizations interested in that particular focus area. Then the foundation selected a dozen or so organizations and brought them together to form a "network." Unfortunately, most of these organizations felt they had little in common and the processes the foundation used in their "network" gatherings did little to help the organizations get to know each other so they never identified commonalities. Because of the structure of the proposals (everyone had to lay out a 3-year plan), all of the groups had already decided what they were going to do, so there was little room for collaborative projects to emerge from the "network."

Now, let's look at another scenario. The foundation or investors identify energy centers in the network and ask them to identify their current network and who else they would like to be connected with. The foundation then negotiates a network building initiative with the core of the network (usually 6-10 organizations), providing the core with support to map their network and then learn basic Network Weaving skills so they can expand and enhance their network relationships. A key aspect of this strategy is to use the network weaving "training" as an opportunity to support the formation of a peer Community of Practice/Action/Reflection. Part of the Network Guardian role the foundation plays involves listening to the organizations and facilitating (or paying for facilitators) who watch topics emerge and structure convenings of all sorts (phone, FTF, Ning) (Twosies, small groups) to research and/or organize learning/discussion on these emerging topics. Out of this initial learning action collaborations form (which will usually need some coaching in inter-organizational project management!) and start doing things, usually innovative actions where there is high uncertainty.

So again, the foundation can help the collaboratives process what is happening - in real time as they "rapid prototype" - and make sense of what is happening. Does what they are doing feel like its going in the right direction? What have they been surprised about? What did they notice? What do they need to learn about? Who can they learn that from? For this kind of learning to lead to breakthroughs, the foundation as network guardian will need to make sure the reflection process includes participants and observers as well as the organizational staff.

So that this peer learning network is sustainable, it's important that the initial facilitator train individuals in the network in the skills need to continue learning activities after the initial grant ends. In this way, the facilitators seed the network with new network building and learning capacities that can become positively infectious!

What are your thoughts? Would this approach work? Who has already tried something like this?

Social Network Analysis Workshop

Escape the snowy North and come learn something new in sunny San Diego!

Valdis Krebs will be presenting a 1/2 day workshop on practical applications of social network analysis [SNA] at the upcoming Sunbelt Social Network Conference sponsored by INSNA -- International Network for Social Network Analysis.

This workshop will be on the morning of March 11th at the Bahia Hotel @ Mission Beach in San Diego, California. The Sunbelt conference will run until Sunday, March 15th in the same Hotel.

The hands-on workshop will feature a quick overview of social network analysis as applied to organizations and communities. You will get a chance to use social network analysis software to explore a simple data set. Whether you are a consultant, analyst, manager, activist, student, professor, or journalist you will learn how to apply this useful methodology with clients and customers.

• Register as an INSNA Member - $60 USD
  
• Workshop Registration - SNA in Business - $50 USD
  
• Conference Registration - $150 USD
  

Valdis and Erin Kenneally will have a presentation during the regular conference on Analyzing Networks of Corruption.

Viral Philanthropy Introduction

How can a foundation or charitable endeavor have the greatest impact? I think its through 4 basic strategies:

1. Funding 2-step viral strategies for transformation

2. Providing support for learning/policy communities among "grantees"

3. Creating viral strategies to build an expanding donor community

4. Enabling donor and grantee to engage directly

More on each of these tomorrow!

I'm not sure that any philanthropic effort currently employes all 4, but I'm counting on those of you who have implemented one or more to share your experience with us.

Points of Leverage for Transformation

When we want to understand how small changes can be leveraged into transformation, Donella Meadows has a great list of 12 leverage points she compiled back in the seventies, but which is still so applicable today.

The leverage point I most like is Number 3: The Power of Self-Organization.

The most stunning thing living systems can do is to change themselves utterly by creating whole new structures and behaviors. In biological systems that power is called evolution. In human economies it's called technical advance or social revolution. In systems lingo it's called self-organization.

Self-organization means changing any aspect of a system lower on this list—adding or deleting new physical structure, adding or deleting negative or positive loops or information flows or rules. The ability to self-organize is the strongest form of system resilience, the ability to survive change by changing.

The human immune system can develop responses to (some kinds of) insults it has never before encountered. The human brain can take in new information and pop out completely new thoughts.

Self-organization seems so wondrous that we tend to regard it as mysterious, miraculous. Economists often model technology as literal manna from heaven—coming from nowhere, costing nothing, increasing the productivity of an economy by some steady percent each year. For centuries people have regarded the spectacular variety of nature with the same awe. Only a divine creator could bring forth such a creation.

In fact the divine creator does not have to produce miracles. He, she, or it just has to write clever rules for self-organization. These rules govern how, where, and what the system can add onto or subtract from itself under what conditions.

Self-organizing computer models demonstrate that delightful, mind-boggling patterns can evolve from simple evolutionary algorithms. (That need not mean that real-world algorithms are simple, only that they can be.) The genetic code that is the basis of all biological evolution contains just four letters, combined into words of three letters each. That code, and the rules for replicating and rearranging it, has spewed out an unimaginable variety of creatures.

Self-organization is basically a matter of evolutionary raw material—a stock of information from which to select possible patterns—and a means for testing them. For biological evolution the raw material is DNA, one source of variety is spontaneous mutation, and the testing mechanism is something like punctuated Darwinian selection. For technology the raw material is the body of understanding science has accumulated. The source of variety is human creativity (whatever that is) and the selection mechanism is whatever the market will reward or whatever governments and foundations will fund or whatever tickles the fancy of crazy inventors.

When you understand the power of self-organization, you begin to understand why biologists worship biodiversity even more than economists worship technology. The wildly varied stock of DNA, evolved and accumulated over billions of years, is the source of evolutionary potential, just as science libraries and labs and scientists are the source of technological potential. Allowing species to go extinct is a systems crime, just as randomly eliminating all copies of particular science journals, or particular kinds of scientists, would be.

The same could be said of human cultures, which are the store of behavioral repertoires accumulated over not billions, but hundreds of thousands of years. They are a stock out of which social evolution can arise. Unfortunately, people appreciate the evolutionary potential of cultures even less than they understand the potential of every genetic variation in ground squirrels. I guess that's because one aspect of almost every culture is a belief in the utter superiority of that culture.

Any system, biological, economic, or social, that scorns experimentation and wipes out the raw material of innovation is doomed over the long term on this highly variable planet.

The intervention point here is obvious but unpopular. Encouraging diversity means losing control. Let a thousand flowers bloom and anything could happen!

Who wants that?

Amazing that she wrote this over 30 years ago!

What is Self-Organization?

I like to explain self-organizing as the capacity for any individual or individuals to identify something they would like to do to make a community better, find others who would enable that action to be a success, and access the resources needed to move to action. When many people are involved in numerous collaborative actions, and they share the successes and failures of those actions with others, the community can quickly become transformed and begin operating in new ways. This is called emergence.

Our brains, our immune systems, termite castles, ecosystems are all self-organizing. This self-organization has enabled each of these systems to be wonderfully adaptable and effective - far beyond what any single cell or termite could accomplish on their own.

Are we self-organized now? Well, when we organize a shopping foray with some friends, we are self-organizing. When we plan a wedding, we are self-organizing. Barn-raisings, where farm families would come together to put up a barn in one day, are a quintessentially American example of self-organizing.

But we're not so likely to be effectively self-organizing in relationship to big problems such as climate change or poverty. We tend to rely on bureaucracies or organizations to deal with community issues. Unfortunately organizations have often become siloed, tending to work alone and build an internal monoculture, and thus have difficulty generating the kind of innovation that the world needs right now. And we've become reliant on the operating procedures of the organization, where each person has a job, you know if you don't do your job you may well get fired, and communication channels are given.

So it can really make a difference to set up a support system for self-organizing. Such a system would include training and coaching to build basic self-organizing skills, incentives to encourage people to self-organize, and recognition of the role of network weaver in helping people self-organize. We'll talk more about each of these in future posts.

What has been your experience with self-organizing? What are the most successful self-organizing experiences you have had?

The Forgotten Building Blocks of Self-Organization

Most of the examples of self-organization that I find on the Internet are either personal or large-scale as in the Belarus flashmob example in a previous post.

The missing level of self-organization that no one is talking about is the small stuff: small group collaborations, especially those that cross organizational boundaries.

Self-Organizing Kickoff

If you haven't read Here Comes Everybody, grab a copy and you will soon understand why everybody is talking about self-organizing these days.

Clay Shirky, the author, is an engaging speaker with a long list of easy-to-digest videos on You Tube that I highly recommend.

One of the stories he tells of the power of self-organization took place in Belarus in 2006. Not allowed to protest by the repressive regime, young people used mobile phones to gather large ice-cream eating flashmobs. As smiling ice cream eaters were dragged off to prison, their plight was broadcast all over the world, weakening the legitimacy of the ruling party.

In a recent talk, Shirky asked "Why aren't people using Internet communications for positive actions or "online barn raisings?"

Ernst-Jan Pfauth, in a blog post on Shirky's talk, points out

Well, the people from small farm communities live in a totally different social environment. Three important factors stimulate them to organize events like a barn raising:

The farmers owe each other a favor;
The small social density causes social control. Everybody is tracking everybody’s action;
The people they know are likely to be around for some years, so it’s worth the investment.

Shirky points out that these same conditions don't exist online so we have to design new environments for collaboration.

In upcoming posts, we'll review some of the ways people are starting to organize online and look at the key design elements of self-organizing, whether online or off.

Jean pointed out that some of you are already experimenting, so please let us know what you are doing by responding to this post!

Building on Diversity

Congratulations Mr. Community Organizer!

You beat them with the strategy they mocked.

Recently, I read an excellent book about Abe Lincoln -- Team of Rivals. In order to deal with a divided nation, Lincoln chose his cabinet from the best minds available. He ended up with a cabinet composed of mostly his rivals to the presidency. He chose these men for their abilities and experience. Lincoln knew the problems he faced were too much for one person. He knew he needed a team of experts -- all more capable than him in their specialities.

Lincoln was a master weaver in not only creating his team, but also managing them. A diverse team is difficult to manage, but usually produces better results than a team of like-thinkers. The key to Lincoln's diverse team was different thinking and different expertise and different styles. Yet, by appearance they were very similar -- all old white men. Same packaging, but different attributes.

Today's corporate world is full of apparently diverse individuals -- men, women, whites, blacks, asians, latinos, christians, jews, muslims, gay and straight. Yet, most corporations reward similar thinking -- which does not bring the rewards that diversity promises. We have organizations full of people that look different, but think the same. Everyone should read Team of Rivals to see how to mix, match and manage different skills, styles and abilities for maximum effectiveness.

We focus on Barack Obama's ethnicity -- but that is not why he won. It is his message, his vision, his leadership. 150 years ago, a tall skinny guy from Illinois focused on connecting a severely divided nation. Now, another tall skinny guy from Illinois faces a differently divided nation and needs the best team possible to move this country forward. I was glad to hear that Team of Rivals is one of Obama's favorite books. He will need to apply it's lessons learned to have an effective presidency in these tough times.

Pop!Tech 2008

You know my old saying...

"Connect on your similarities and profit from your differences"

One of the best places to practice that -- if you are a progressive, technical, social, global/local thinker is at the annual Pop!Tech conference held in Camden, Maine every October. Can't remember how many people I met -- many more than the biz cards I collected. They were ALL interesting, if not outright fascinating, each in their own way!

Andrew Zolli, who is the conference curator, is a master network weaver -- connecting others through placement in the program or F2F introductions. You want to connect to Andrew, he will close many triangles for you.

THE conference for connecting -- Pop!Tech.

The New Organizers

"Respect. Empower. Include."

Sounds like the mantra of a network weaver.

Those three words come from the Obama campaign, from the the "Neighborhood Team Leader" concept as described in the Huffington Post.

Basic closing of local triangles...

Her team would be responsible for connecting with all of the Democratic and undecided voters within their "turf."

The strategy is not to have one central organizing point, like old campaigns, but to have multiple weavers working in concert -- each organizes their local geography/social circle. The natural evolution of "friends talking to friends", ...or at least acquaintances who are highly similar.

Our house was visited by one of these Neighborhood Teams. I talked to the volunteer about their tactics. They only visit those who are likely to vote for Obama -- they don't waste their time on those likely not to. This way they contact many more voters likely to tip their way -- an effective use of their time.

"I'm a different person than I was six weeks ago." I asked her to elaborate later. She said, "Now, I'm really asking: how can I be most effective in my community?"

Once connected, the community does not need to disband after the election. These connected people of like mind can stay together for other community improvement efforts.

Ironic, that the strategy & tactics of community organizing may be what defeats MacCain/Palin -- the exact concept they mocked at their convention.

Why do Network Weavers need to understand Web 2.0?

Why all the emphasis I've been placing on Web 2.0? Well, because the possibilities it represents are tantalizing: can new social technology help us create more effective networks that enable us to create a world that is much better for virtually everyone?

With so much at stake, I think it's imperative for us to allocate time to hang out with people Stowe Boyd, a blogger and Web innovator, calls edglings - people who are experimenting with new tools as they pop out, and are giving us a sense of what they are really good for. Here are intriguing bits of what Stowe Boyd is discovering:

A rich online culture is transformative for us individually and for the culture at large.

Information streaming from our friends on the web will shift the way we make sense of the world.

Information will be pushed to you all the time from friends, not pulled to you by browsing.

Don't set up a community online and hope people will come, find out where people are already hanging out online and be there listening

.

As Network Weavers, we often are the bridge between innovators such as Stowe and our communities. We have to hang around, or maybe even become, edglings ourselves. We need to learn how to make sense of all the experimentation and figure out how to communicate about the best of it to our peers. We need to have a basket of social tools ready so that when a situation arises where that tool can make a big difference, we are ready to show people how they can use it.

I'm astounded how much I've been learning about possibilities just by following 100 edglings on Twitter and by using blog readers. After only a few weeks, I've slid into a new culture - and it's all been quite painless, even fun and enlightening.

Do you know any edglings? Tell us about them.

If you don't know any edglings, how might you find them and weave them into your network?

Or, look who Valdis, Jack and I are following on Twitter and follow them. Listen. Open up. Watch what happens.

Triangles on Twitter

We often talk about closing triangles and making introductions as a way to build resilient networks through network weaving.

Here is an example of closing triangles via Twitter. Track the triangle closing process from my Twitter log above -- oldest tweet on bottom. The blank space in the tweet log was from another person I am following that had nothing to do with the closing of the triangle. Starting at the bottom of the above pic...

1) I follow John Robb on Twitter and he tweets about a book he is reading
2) I re-tweet his post so that those who follow me on Twitter can learn about the book.
3) June, who is following me, sees the re-tweet and aims her tweet at John [using @johnrobb] stating she has read the book and found it useful.

Two people that I have known, but did not know each other, can now be connected. They connect by seeing [via Twitter] their mutual interest in a book and in an idea. Maybe June and John can now talk about "resilient communities" and their experiences with them?

Since June and John have some similar interests, yet come from diffeent communities and contexts, we have another example of...

Connect on your similarities and profit from your differences!

Who's not in the network map?

Often people create network maps by surveying the "usual suspects" and then creating a map of the relationships among that set of individuals.

I think it's just as important to show who's not in the network. I've been saying for longer than I care to remember that diverse perspectives are critical if we are to be jolted out of our "normal" ways of thinking and acting so that we can make breakthroughs.

The map above shows a network of community organizations interested in helping lower income entrepreneurs access credit. A group of them started meeting, but found they were making little headway. When they decided to map their network, I insisted that they include names of other people who had expertise in lending: area bankers and credit union staff. When the community organizations saw the map shown above, they instantly realized their problem and knew what to do about it! They saw that they were lacking in the very perspectives they needed to make a serious impact on the problem.

It's astounding how important visuals are in helping people see what, to some of us, might seem like the obvious. People in this group were aware that they didn't have any bankers in their network, but until they saw the network map, they weren't able to understand that they were missing a resource and perspective that was needed to solve their problem. The lack of lines to the bankers made them instantaneously realize that these resources would not appear by magic, but needed to be accessed through relationship-building or, as we say, network weaving.

The map enabled the group to identify one person (lower middle of map) who did have relationships with a number of bankers. This person set up a series of breakfast meetings where several people from community organizations were able to get to know a few bankers and gauge their interest in joining the effort.

Once they began to include other voices, they developed a strategy that enabled them to reach many, many more entrepreneurs than they would have on their own.

Who's not linked to your network? Young People? Rich people? People from different ethnic or racial backgrounds?

June

Update:

Below are two previous posts of ours that examine adding diverse nodes and links to your network.

• bridging holes in your network
• weaving at a distance

Often you need to create an "attractor" to bring people you don't know out of the woodwork. ACEnet in Athens Ohio and E4S in Cleveland Ohio are such organizations. They attract people and groups who have similar interests and goals but often do not have any connections with others who are like them.

Valdis

Network Guardians

One of the aspects of being a Network Weaver that I find most intriguing is the Network Guardian role. Fairly early in our network building in Appalachian Ohio, I played this role when I noticed that we needed to set up training for Network Weavers (we didn't call them that at that time). We found a group of 3 fabulous local "process people" who were willing to lead the peer learning group and then gathered 15-20 people from a half dozen key local organizations who wanted to learn the many skills and processes needed when working interorganizationally. The training/learning effort was a huge success and the newly skilled leadership that resulted made a big difference in transforming the region to what it is today.

A Network Guardian is like a Blakian angel (see above) who mentally flies over the network, notices what could make a difference for the network at that point in time and helps makes that happen. A Network Guardian might see the need for an article in the paper about the importance of networks, or might work with a local funder to set up an innovation fund that provides seed money to self-organized collaboratives.

This a a great role for foundations. They often have lots of information about the many organizations in their community or region and their networks and thus have the birdseye view needed to be a Network Guardian. They also have the resources to put in place the structures that most networks need: training for Network Weavers, Innovation Funds, communications systems, Network mapping, deep reflection sessions, etc. They have access to the public venues where they can "reframe": extolling the importance of openness to new ideas, explaining the intricacies of self-organization, and encouraging collaboration.

Does your network have Network Guardians? How do we encourage more people to play the Network Guardian role?

Nice Intro Slide Show for Twitter

Twitter for educational purposes -A tutorial

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: school2.0 howto)

Keys to Scale and Transformation

What made the Savings for Change project so successful?

1. Train and Support Animators or Network Weavers. The animators were regional people who were outgoing, good listeners and good trainers--and good at letting go! They got groups started, then were trained to shift their role from trainer to coach.

2. Start Where The Energy Is. Don't try to work with everyone initially but pull together those who are really excited and interested and positive. This greatly increases the likelihood of success. You're working with those who are more open to innovation and probably have better collaborative skills.

3. Act Your Way Into A New Way of Thinking/Being: The first part of the project brought a small group together to do something that was both personally beneficial and good for the community. It quickly made a difference for the women in a way they, and others in the community, could see.

4. Frame The Personal Act As A Step Towards Greater Good. From the beginning, the animators set up the expectation that some of the people in the group would want to share the concept of savings groups with other women and help them set up a group of their own.

5. Have a Support System in Place for Those Who Want to Spread the Success. The animators offered a pictograph Handbook, group training, and one-on-one coaching for those who wanted to help others start a group. We need to provide the same kind of Network Weaving training in our networks.

6. Help people make the shift from one success to a way of life. Oxfam had the animators seed the community with the idea that the process of self-organizing that was so successful in the savings groups could be used in many ways to improve their community. They offered some specific examples and trained and coached the communities to implement those.

How do good practices spread and become transformative?

The massiveness of poverty in the world is daunting – 3 billion people or 50% of the world population lives on less than $2.50 a day! Most international development, with high overhead due to involvement of western staff, does not begin to make a dent in these statistics.

Jeff Ashe, Manager of Community Finance at Oxfam, knows there is another way: build the capacity of local women to self-organize and then encourage them to share those self-organizing strategies with surrounding communities.

Let’s unpack this into its 3 parts:

1. First, local animators are hired who go into villages and set up a Women’s Savings Group. The 20 women in each group put a tiny amount of money into a common pot each week, then lend out that total to one woman to buy assets – such as a goat or chickens – that she uses to generate more income for her family. No bank (with all the attendant overhead) holds or tracks the money. Instead, the women are taught a simple memory system to calculate interest and repayments. Gradually, the women in the group move their families out of poverty.

2. The second stage makes the project viral. From the beginning, the animators encourage women in the group to learn how to set up additional women’s savings groups, both in their village and in nearby villages. The women accomplish this with only modest “coaching” from the animators. This way each initial savings group can eventually generate 10 or 20 times the impact of the original animator at no cost.

3. The third stage is transformational. During this stage the culture of the village and region becomes one of self-organizing: the women in the groups begin to see other things they can change in their villages and begin to organize projects to make those changes. Oxfam is helping to catalyze this shift by encouraging savings groups to market malaria nets and develop ponds to capture water during the rainy season.

A critical piece of the success: animators engaged in deep reflection that generated several critical breakthroughs. The first occurred when animators, very early in the process, observed that some women were going off on their own and starting additional groups. This was reframed from a problem to an opportunity, and led to the viral strategy described in 2 above. The second was the development of an oral mnemonic record keeping system that enabled illiterate women to be involved in the project. This then morphed into a pictograph system that made it even easier for women to share the system with other women.

The result: In just 37 months the Savings for Change Project ramped up in Mali – the country in the world with the highest poverty rate – to include more than 95,000 women. With funding from the Gates Foundation, this number is rapidly accelerating, and 80% of the new groups will be formed by women from existing savings groups. A rigorous research component will track the impact of the program on poverty and social capital.

You can make donations to this great program here.

Tomorrow I’ll post on how we can apply this to our situations. Post your thoughts and I’ll incorporate them into the post!

New Resources for Non-Profits

Two recent posts on the internet point out some exciting possibilities for non-profits and community organizations. They point to huge shifts taking place that we need to work together on if we want to find the emergent "vein of gold."

The first is the rapidly increasing numbers of retirees (and many of my friends who are retiring are still in their 50s!) who want to become engaged in civic life. They are your future donors, volunteers or even staff. But they want to be engaged. Many don't want to just drop money on you but will insist on becoming actively involved in what you are doing.

The second is what Clay Shirky (you really ought to read "Here Comes Everyone" - It is so good and an easy read) calls cognitive surplus. In the past, people spent an enormous amount of time passively watching television.

If you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project—every page, every edit, every line of code, in every language Wikipedia exists in—that represents something like the cumulation of 98 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it's a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it's the right order of magnitude, about 98 million hours of thought.
And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that's 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 98 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads. This is a pretty big surplus. People asking, "Where do they find the time?" when they're looking at things like Wikipedia don't understand how tiny that entire project is, as a carve-out of the cognitive surplus that's finally being dragged into what Tim O'Reilly calls an architecture of participation.

Now, the interesting thing about a surplus like that is that society doesn't know what to do with it at first... Because if people knew what to do with a surplus with reference to the existing social institutions, it wouldn't be a surplus, would it? It's precisely when no one has any idea how to deploy something that people have to start experimenting with it, in order for the surplus to get integrated, and the course of that integration can transform society.

But, Shirky argues, that surplus is moving to the interactive spaces on the web. Many, many people would rather be active, and as opportunities for interactivity on the web explode, people are flocking to sites that let them do something! (Look at all those contributing to Wikipedia or Flickr.)

Web 2.0 enables us to find people who have already moved from passivity to interaction. Just hop on Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, delicious, etc. You'll find people who just might be interested in (maybe inspired by) your visions or directions. Then we need to weave them (and their network) into our network through involvement in specific projects: helping to set up a meeting or helping to make your web space more interactive.

As Clay Shirky says, "People want to participate, they want to produce, they want to share." Now how can we engage that energy to help the world become a better place for more people?

How to Build a Network on Twitter

I'm spending so much time on Twitter because I feel it's such an important tool for Network Weavers.

Someone asked me how to get started on Twitter. Some thoughts:

1. Figure out what you want: learning, marketing yourself or something, getting to know new people, just mucking around?

2. If you know other people on Twitter, start following them. Then check out who they follow (we call this getting to know your friends' friends). If their posts look interesting, follow them. Many of them will turn around and start following you. In the first ten days, I started following 38 people and now 31 are following me.

3. Check out twitterlocal.net and see who in your town or neighborhood is on. Follow the ones you know or find interesting.

4. Use search.twitter.com and put in key words to find people interested in the same things you are. I tried civic engagement, transition cities and self-organizing. Then I used TweetBeep.com to keep me posted when anyone says anything about those topics.

5. Think of people you have little connection with: people from different ethnic or racial backgrounds, people with different political views, urban people if your rural (and vice versa), etc.

6. Watch other people's retweets or RTs (they put @person's name) then if you like what that person says, click on their name, read some of their posts and start following them.

7. When someone starts following you, send them a nice note.

8. After awhile, stop following people who never post or who's posts aren't up your alley, and try some new names.

What ideas do you have? For those of you with Twitter experience, what have you found works?

Let us know your experience in getting on Twitter!

Regional Flavor Resources

Thought I would pull together a few Regional Flavor Resources. Regional Flavor is a networking strategy that encourages communities to idenitfy unique aspects of their region and work together on projects to enhance that flavor. Generally, Regional Flavor Projects include food, tourism and artisanal entrepreneurs working with local microenterprise, economic development and tourism organizations.

Regional Flavor

Entrepreneurship with A Regional Flavor

Food for Thought

Online bashing - It doesn't have to be that way!

If you follow any political blogs, you have experienced how vicious people can be to those who hold different perspectives. It doesn't have to be that way!

A more productive path starts with the bravery of people moving into online spaces where people with different perspectives hang out. Our Chamber Executive Director (I'll call her Chamber Chief in this post) was brave enough to join a Sustainable Economy blog. However, when someone posted an article about Al Gore, she asked (snippily) whether Gore had an energy efficient home (She knew he didn't). A Sustainable Warrior responded by saying she was scapegoating, and back and forth it went.

But one of the facilitators of the list was fortunately a skilled Network Weaver. I'm going to quote generously from her intervention posts (using the pseudonyms). Wow! We all need to learn to be this skilled.

"Hi Folks! Thanks for all the great input. Chamber Chief...I too ask that you stay involved in this exchange. Let's see if we can ride this wave and not sweep anything under the rug. Sustainable Warrior, thanks for adding something to the conversation even though it triggered some uncomfortable feelings. I hope you will follow up on your comment but I do hope that we can raise the bar toward more collective caring and effort.

"I'm not convinced that we need to classify what just emerged as a conflict however. It certainly carries with it the potential for conflict but I'm hoping we can use this as an opportunity to defuse it, practice some communication skills, and move on toward our similar goals. It appears to me that the exchange might have more to do with the level of frustration many of us feel and the subsequent miscommunication, (i.e. assumptions, hurtful displaced comments) that often emerges with it. We, as a society, aren't very good at communication and conflict resolution and some feel it lies at the root of our current problems on the planet. Let's see if we can use this opportunity; after all it is a microcosm for our larger social challenges. If we can't learn the skills needed to care and communicate with each other here in a healthy fashion, how do we think we can create a more compassionate and peaceful planetary society?

"Do we agree that everyone's input is valuable, that we need to welcome diverse perspectives and views, that we want to create a caring and peaceful world, and that we need to learn to work together as a team if we are going to address our challenges and manifest the kind of life we want for ourselves and future generations?"

She followed this gentle talk by taking the most inflammatory statements and offering suggestions for how they could have be stated to still articulate a viewpoint but in less accusatory language. She listed simple rules the original group had agreed on:

"Listen to others respectfully, Build on other’s ideas, Leave space for all, Speak briefly and to the point, Be open to the guidance of the facilitator, Avoid critiquing, Agree to disagree, No hand guns. (hehehe)"

The response from both parties was amazing. The Chamber Chief commented:

"Wow. This is very well done and inspirational. I have a lot to learn about effective communications. I violated a lot of the agreements that you listed with my question and then again with my response. I would much rather work with Sustainable Warrior on a business idea than escalating frustrations that lead us no where. I REALLY want to be able to hold conversation and think the principles that you describe can be helpful in that manner. Please be patient with me as I learn these techniques."

Remarkable!

Network Weavers as Community Organizers

Last night Sarah Palin attacked community organizing.

This morning I sent $$$ to the Obama campaign.

Complex systems have indirect and unintended consequences... you would have learned that in Science class, Sarah.

Network weaving and community organizing have a strong presence in our nation's history. The American Revolution would not have been possible without connecting distributed networks and organizing local communities. Paul Revere, Ben Franklin and George Washington were mega network weavers. Without their community organizing, we would not have had a united front against King George and the British.


Community organizing and network weaving are much harder than working the hierarchy [from a position of power]. They are skills necessary to work in the real world where you have no hierarchical authority and must organize diverse parties with conflicting interests -- herd cats. In fact, community organizing may be one of the best training grounds for the global economy/society we live in today.

What do you folks think? What is your response to the attack on community organizing?

Update: Oh yeah, another famous community organizier...

Update 2: MSNBC reports Obama picks up $8-$10 million since Palin speech. While WSJ reports that McCain picked up only $1 million in the same time period.

Finding People Who Are Alike And Different

Moving Networks to Action is all about finding others who are interested in the same thing you are. But if you are going to be transformative you also need to be interacting with people who have different perspectives and access to different resources than you.

So, how do you find people with common interests who are also different in important ways? This is where I'm convinced Twitter is revolutionary. Twitter Search enables you to put in a word or words that describe your interest. Here you can see we have entered the word Foodshed.



This produces a list of names of people who have Twittered about foodsheds. You can check each one out, click on any that you want to Follow, and Twitter them to start a conversation. But particularly look for those who have different perspectives and stretch your mind. I found a person who linked to this cool Canadian map -- a new resource!

As a Network Weaver, you can help people in your networks use Twitter to find people with very specific mutual interests. Have them brainstorm a list of words and phrases that represent their current passion, and then steer them to Twitter Search.

June

UPDATE: Very practical advice June! Imagine how Twitter would work @ ACEnet -- if you can't make it to the 4 big food networking hubs in town -- Village Bakery, Kitchen Incubator, Big Chimney or Farmer's Market, just log in to Twitter [via mobile phone, if you have SMS/texting] and you have awareness of the conversations that are happening @ the hubs! Twitter provides constant ambient awareness!

Your post above is the perfect example of why I say...

Connect on your similarities and profit from your differences!

P.S. When June, Jack and I get together F2F we have many a-ha moments and often riff off of each other's ideas [we are also similar, yet different]. Hopefully, we can share some of that dynamic here through interactive posts like the one above.

Valdis