BLUE THING #1: TNNW Surveys, Analyses and Findings

For the results of TNNW Survey #3 (our last survey, about "Chambers of Commerce"), please click here .



NEW! - TNNW SURVEY #4



Times are changing.  Our survey question is a very direct one, and highly applicable to the way in which most networking activity is initiated:

“Which five top online social/business networks (please number them in order of effectiveness) have afforded you the most value/results?”

Please take a moment and fill out the survey form below. If it does not appear (because of incompatibility with your browser, a hypervigilant popup filter, or because of a deeply ingrained fear of rejection), just click on:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Ej_2bGibSLyD6pawhColbqLA_3d_3d  and the form will pop up and fill your computer screen instantly, like a movie closeup of Steven Segal, but in a more annoying fashion (assuming that this is possible). If the preceding url is just too long for you, you can use this one instead and save an immeasurably insignificant amount of time: http://twitlik.com/TNNWSurveyNumber4 .

We value your feedback, and would appreciate if you took a few moments to respond to some questions. This survey will close on 11/20/2009. Once again... that nasty form popup link should be right under here...

Click Here To Take Survey

Again, our apologies...if the form didn't miraculously appear above, simply click your heels together three times, say "there's no place like home" and hit: http://twitlik.com/TNNWSurveyNumber4  .

REMEMBER.....TNNW SURVEY # 5 will be coming out very soon. And no, we're not giving out any hints. Well, perhaps one ... if you are reading this and you do not already have your free subscription to THE NATIONAL NETWORKER Newsletter, click on http://twitlik.com/IN  to receive your subscription.

Subscribe now...don't make me stop this car...

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle (http://aboutdouglascastle.blogspot.com/)
THE NATIONAL NETWORKER COMPANIES

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BLUE THING #1: TNNW Surveys, Analyses and Findings

CANADA: The Progressive Group for Independent Business – Business Clubs

by Kensel Tracy, Canadian Bureau Chief

In talking with Craig Chandler from The Progressive Group for Independent Business Business Clubs (PG IB) you know you are talking to a business man and a consummate networker. Craig sounds like a radio announcer and I find out later on in the interview that he has in own online radio show at www.craigchandler.com. and I was impressed.

PGIB is a networking club that started in 1992 as a political organization and in 1997 started a link with the Calgary Chamber of Commerce. Craig who is the owner and the Executive Director of the company now run business clubs throughout the provinces of Alberta, B.C. and Saskatchewan with the sole purpose of helping businesses grow through networking.

Craig makes a point of telling me that his clubs are a business and they are dedicated to helping build businesses throughout western Canada and that they play a role in influencing the Federal Government in Canada through their lobbying efforts. PGIB clubs are setup like other networking referral clubs in that the weekly luncheon meetings act as a sales force for all the businesses that join the clubs. Membership dues are $320.00 per year.

When asked about his views on networking Craig is quite candid and open about it. He thinks that networking is all about relationships and in this economy; relationships are now going to be more important than ever. Calgary is located directly in the centre of Canada’s oil country and has been through a recent boom. With dropping of oil prices and the world economy, Craig believes the small business person and their ability to be able to network effectively with others is the main ingredient of business survival.

His business approach to running a good networking club is simple. Ensure that there are good people to network with, provide a good mix of business opportunities, add added values and ensure that everybody wins.



Craig says he is proud that his conservative business organization and has been able to take a stand on a variety of topics that have helped businesses grow in Canada by taking his case to governments throughout the province and Canada. He makes no bones about the fact that his networking organization is built on strong capitalist values and conservative views and that he proudly states this throughout the conversation. The organization lobbies consistently on public accountability, less government and lower taxes overall. Something I think that most business people would agree are great causes to fight for.

Craig’s wife has also started her own version of the PGIB for women. The women’s version of the club allows women business people to get together and hold their own meetings without men attending. There are meetings that are mixed and meetings for women only. The women’s group allows for networking to take place in a more relaxed and open atmosphere.

The Progressive Group for Independent Business, Business Clubs are one of the great opportunities for business people to get involved in a business organization in Calgary, Edmonton in Alberta and throughout various cities in British Columbia. Craig Chandler is the Executive Director and can be reached at www.pgib.ca.

Kensel Tracy is The Marketing Coach and Senior Partner with the Corporate Coachworkz Inc. business coaching and consulting company located in Chelsea, Quebec. He is also the President of Business over Breakfast (BoB Clubs) now setting up business networking clubs throughout North America.


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CANADA: The Progressive Group for Independent Business – Business Clubs

POWER THOUGHT OF THE WEEK: Networking Power Self-Assessment, Part 4

Power Thought of the Week with Patricia Parham, Ph.D.

Visibility

How “visible” are you in your networks? Do you occupy a place of prestige and honor or do you reside in the rank and file? What have you done to make yourself “known”? What could you do to increase your visibility? Describe the leadership positions that you have taken. Once you are in the right networks, act to ensure that the spotlight shines on you in a way that shows your products and services to their best advantage. Be creative and help people to think positively and talk about you!

_______________________________________________________

Posted to THE NATIONAL NETWORKER.



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POWER THOUGHT OF THE WEEK: Networking Power Self-Assessment, Part 4

It’s a Y-ed, Wide World

By Maria Elena Duron

Multicultural Networking Editor

I interviewed Vikki Pusong an avid blogger and bio-chemistry major in Manila, Philippines who I’ve connected with via the online world. I asked her, “does multiculturalism matter to Gen Y?” Vikki’s response was, “No really. Maybe it's because we don't really like to check if someone's Latina or Asian or Caucasian. It's like we're busier with what's happening in our social groups and the causes were into than finding out who's from where and who speaks what. It's like, your cultural background doesn’t really have an impact on what my views or opinions are. And I think most of the people I know are like that, too, even those from different countries and backgrounds.”

Oh yes, the Gen Y-ers or better known as the Millennials have a wide world thanks to social networking. “So what is it like to be a Gen Y-er?” you might ask. Take a peek of what’s happening in the multicultural environment of the Net Generation.

Multitasking made easy. Technology is everywhere and the Milllennials use it all the time like doing homework, finishing a project at work, and building relationships. This generation relies on emails, instant messengers, mobile phones, iPods, and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Believe it or not, they can listen to their iPods, reply to text messages and do their homework all at the same time. It seems like there’s no time to waste. They are ever so busy updating their Facebook profiles, uploading pictures in Flickr, posting new articles in their blogs and commenting on their friends’ post. This group is not only interested in playing computer games, they are very knowledgeable in making them, too. Sharing their games and personal information to the world is their thing. Imagine how many people connected to the internet that could see what they like to eat, what saddens them, or what music they rave about. They could easily find people all over the world who share the same interests and be friends with them by just a click of the mouse.

The word “friend” has a new meaning. If you search its meaning in a Merriam-Webster dictionary, you will find that a friend is “one who is attached to another by affection or esteem.” However, for a Gen Y-er, a friend is a contact in Friendster or MySpace. Don’t get me wrong, this generation is still interested in keeping relationships that involve feelings or affection. But we have to take note that they still keep a social network in cyberspace where “friends” is simply a tally of contacts in that certain site. “Friends” are the people who comment on their pictures or blogs or view their public profiles. Aside from social networking sites, they have made friends by playing online games, moderating forums and joining real time online discussions in mIRC or Yahoo! Messenger.

Gender and ethnicity is not a problem. Jeffrey Jensen Arnett Ph.D., authored books and studied about these “emerging adults” for years. He claims that they are more educated as compared to the older generations. The National Center for Education Statistics showed that the number of undergraduates in 2004 reached up to 17.3 million, a number twice as large as what is was in 1970s (8.6 million). Because of their knowledge in using computers and unique ways of making friends through the internet, Dr. Arnett’s studies shows that they have fewer barriers in terms of race and gender. Suddenly, the world has become flat. As long as they share the same and sometimes different views or interests, they can easily form connections with other people. They don’t really mind if the person is a man or a woman, whether they are multilingual or if they belong to a certain ethnic group. Dave Verhaagen, author of the book Parenting the Millennial Generation, mentioned that the Millennials have a potential to be a great generation because they can see other people beyond their age, gender, or ethnicity.

Welcome the new ways to promote social awareness. Social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn have found new ways to involve this group of emerging adults in creating social awareness. There are advocacy groups like “Support a Woman’s Right to Choose” and Pro-Life where members can join and rally support. Being collaborative is actually one of the positive traits of Generation Y. Why do you think MTV’s Anti-AIDS concerts sell like pancakes? It’s because Gen Y-ers think that life is an ongoing collaboration with different people. They just love getting involved, so more and more non-profit organizations take advantage of this opportunity to include them in various causes. This group made volunteering and civil involvement the “it” thing.

Gen-Yers have to go to work, too. I have come across this article in the internet called, “Attention Boomers: Generation Y Expects To Find You In Social Networks.” The author shared about a Talent Management head’s interview with a Gen Y candidate. The interviewer was stunned when the candidate mentioned that he couldn’t find him on the social network, LinkedIn. Obviously, aside from Googling the company name and its people prior to a job interview, the candidate tried to search for the HR Director’s profile in a social network to get to know the interviewer’s personality and see how he can make a connection. As for the working Gen Y-ers, studies show that they love to work with bosses who are fond of teaching new things and providing constant feedback. They enjoy learning in a dynamic and interactive environment.

The Gen Y-ers’ way of building and maintaining relationships has affected schools, jobs, and marketing industries. Also, more and more studies are made about Generation Y. Companies are now interested about their work patterns and how their lifestyle affects their output. Because of this group’s distinct behavior, aside from parents and employers, marketers are also keeping an eye on this new type of consumer. Truly, there’s a lot of potential in their humongous network that knows no boundaries. But the best way to really learn more about them is to join them and see what it’s like to be inside their Y-ed, wide world.

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It’s a Y-ed, Wide World

The Value of the Network: Links As Social Capital (by Joe Lamantia)

August 30, 2007 03:17 PM | Posted in: Networks and Systems

This is a small site with modest traffic. But it is still the case that a substantial set of inbound links lead people from diverse origins - search engines, blogs, content aggregators, feed readers, directories, etc. - to many destinations within the site every day. Some of these connections are visible in the del.icio.us tag clouds that appear with individual postings, my contribution to the Web's ongoing collective experiment with tagging and social bookmarking.

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu named this set of connections and the social relationships associated with them in the early 1970s, coining the term social capital, and thereby inspiring legions of civic and international organizations to create development, investment, and management strategies for this new valuable kind of resource.

But what is the value of the network?

Fast forward a bit, and we can see that no matter how you choose to calculate that value, Google has built a business relying the new resource of cumulative social capital, using it via mechanisms such as latent semantic indexing.

And we can see that in giving form and focus to the idea of social capital, Bourdieu set the conceptual stage for the recent explosion of social media and networking applications. Simultaneously destinations - albeit of unknown lifespan - and business ventures, the social networks are recent exemplars of longtime cultural movements of reification, virtualization, and visualization of fields - another key concept identified by Bourdieu.

Behind the scenes, the information architecture that solidifies the limited social capital of this site in physical / digital form is a motley collection of disparately named HTML files, tag destination pages, cgi-powered content streams, RSS feeds, local search results sets, etc. The prospect of getting another publishing platform to mimic this miscellany was - like tuning an instrument to play songs composed with notes from another music system - not something I could do as quickly and cheaply.

And so in combination with the perpetual urgency of the DIY mindset, the imperative of preserving the value of the existing store of social capital made the decision to upgrade along an existing path to MT4 simple.

Architecturally, this is the equivalent of sticking with the brand name you know well.

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The Value of the Network: Links As Social Capital (by Joe Lamantia)