Sunday Core Meeting Email

Hi Everyone:

Not all of you were at our core meeting yesterday but I wanted to bring my thoughts to our core group (those who were there and those who were not) about what Betsey and I envisioned before we brought the idea to Gloria and the rest of the core group when we talked about starting a women's network.  I think people get confused about networking and a network.

My definition of networking is to attend networking events, attend meetings and exchange business cards, and perhaps meet people you do not know or would like to meet.  In my view, it is not going to go beyond the meeting or the event.  

Building a network is a whole different animal.  Building the network means:

• increase the connections to cultivate and access resources and capabilities

• find out about the cool stuff other people in the network are doing, connect and find out how you can contribute to move their initiative forward
  

• build collaborations and/or partnerships with like minded people to be part of or a co-creator of transformative initiatives and enterprise building. 

Our women's network should serve as a support system to empower other women and encourage them to move forward with their ideas.  This is all about you and the opportunities you see.  To contuing building this network you must post to the blog, bring new information to share, post new models you come across that you think with be valuable to our members, consistently invite people to the Near-Time space and bring new people to the core meetings and the tv show.  When you accomplish this kind of network building you will start to see the network effect and exponential growth.  It will not happen overnight  but it can happen quickly if are relentless and can keep our focus.

The network should support initiatives.  I-Open can help by being a fiscal agent for any project you would like to get funded.  The individual or team would look for funding, write a proposal and then I-Open can serve as the nonprofit to move the money from the Institute to you.

I think TL's idea of quarterly events is excellent.  This will help to get the word out regionlally with each member sending out invitations to their lists and getting a diverse group of people together where you will find the gathering much more interesting and productive.  A ticket price could bring in money to support the initiatives.

Use the comment space below to share your thoughts this.  Thank you for all your time trying to figure this out but I am sure if we keep the eye on the road we will get there.

Susan