The Characteristics of High-Performance Personal Networks

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Characteristics of High-Performance Personal Networks
Well the website's a bit wonky right now - it's a combination of some less than perfect code and getting slammed by search engines (if you get 1000 hits a day, 999 of them will be search engine hits - that's a real challenge for anyone writing software). (Or maybe it's a DOS - I 'killall' but then all the httpd threads start right up again... sigh). Ross Dawson attempts to identify what makes personal networks work well, and hits on a number of things familiar to readers of these pages - things like diversity and dynamism. The article also describes "six key behaviors that create energizing relationships" - things like "have and communicate a compelling vision", "seek and acknowledge quality contributions", "give genuine attention to people." Well - ok. But, it seems to me, if you do these things in order to create or cultivate a personal network, they will be hollow and strained. Rather, these activities are ends in themselves - and a personal network is just one of the things that grows out of them. More...