Connecting People
Friday, September 19th, 2008
Connecting people has always been something I’ve done, mostly inadvertently, but more recently people have been asking me the typical questions..
“dude, do you know anyone from X who knows about Y?”
“I need a person to work on A, do you know anyone who lives near B?”
“I’ve got an idea that X would love, can you hook me up?”
“Are you friends with A? It’d be great to meet him lol”
You get the idea.
So I’m trying to be more.. in want of a better word.. calculating. I’m putting a lot more consideration into who I connect to who, how that reflects on me, and ultimately whether it will work out.
I’ve spent the last few years surrounding myself by better people. People better than me, mostly, but people that excel in what they do. These are the people that I recommend to others or that I want to work with myself. I’m careful when adding people to LinkedIn too. Considering what the consequences of giving access to my network are. I should trust these people before giving them direct contact, without me, to my valuable list of colleagues. Don’t be offended if I don’t add you, or don’t accept your invitation. It’s just that I’m trying to preserve the quality of contact, reducing the noise. This is what I’d want, so I’m giving this to them.
What this has made me think is that there (obviously) must be a better way for me to manage this. Maybe Highrise or something similar. I need social contacts, where each contact is not just an object in my list, but is controlled by them, including access controls that allows them to choose to be available to others in my network or not. Currently my LinkedIn list is both a list for my access *and* my contacts.
In conclusion, yes I probably know someone who can help you, and yes I’ll absolutely try and help you find them. But remember that this is a two way transaction that I’m in the middle of and I need to consider both sides. This is in no way a warning not to ask me, it’s more of a disclaimer :)
