Extending and enhancing an existing network

Here's a comment to my previous blog post. It seems important enough to promote it to a post of it's own. Personally, I walked away from the McCrae Alumni weekend very impressed. Here's a group of people who have built a (human) network that transcends the institution that initialized it. Below is an example of the group's internal discussion. Good suggestions, and thanks for letting me be a part of the unfolding dialogue.

Hey thanks for buying the power assited bike Michael.

I think I asked a question about effective practices that each McRae alum could engage in immediately: (1) on existing social networks like Linkedin, Facebook and MySpace, and (2) what are the most effective ways we can project our power as a network, i.e., what are some good examples of other successful networks of people who have projected power?

A couple of answers that occurred to me:
RE: effective practices on existing social networks ...

• we need to be consistent in the name we use for our program. Because "the Program" has changed names some call it McRae, other APMCP, others Cap. Consistent name and tags would make our profiles and comments easier to find,
• be a good follower. Charles Caldwell introduce many of us McRae folks to Linked in within a year of its founding, most of us didn't take it seriously. Many still have not spend a lot of time moving their contacts in. I didn't spend anytime on Linkedin until I noticed that a guy who is at least 5 years older than me and commands millions (maybe billions) of investment funds and put $50-million into our project in China had 80 contacts there. For example, if someone opens McRae Facebook group ... join, comment ... it take seconds.
• do business with fellow alum, refer them for jobs, collaborate, coinvest, help your fellow lobsters out of the pot (Canadians usually spend thier time pulling each other back into the pot! who said pot?),
• practical recoms for the alum website - expand the profiles, add some mapping/geotagging, let each person add photos and attach business plans/documents to share to their profiles, add RSS feeds for each profile and the whole site so that when anyone contributes content the network gets the intel,
• I wonder if now is the right stage for philanthropy efforts. Sure if a fellow alum is running for a cause by all means, but if we are raising $20,000 as a group for something, should we be reinvesting directly in the network (improve website, hire someone to write a report on where the alum network goes from here, particularly if Cap is out of the picture completely).

Good introductory presentation on the changes that are effecting everyone.
Thanks

You're welcome. Thanks for letting me be a small part of it!