karen and ryan have headed back to the US… am catching up, balancing books etc

on thursday and friday we had about 30 people together interacting with ryan over his research. it was too good an opportunity to miss so while that group of people were together we also discussed the loose network(s) that exist already and whether we can relate better and share resources and so on by being more intentional. there is a lot of caution because of a fear of naming, branding, control and all those things. but overall people do want to add value to the relationships that exist and open up those relationships to new people. so we ended up with a cautious yes to move forward which feels good.

to get the ball rolling, steve collins presented some theory from the world of mathematics on networks. this was fascinating. like all these things it had its own set of terms and language so may not be everybody’s thing. … but it does offer quite a few insights into networks and enriching them. steve has put his notes up as text and slides which is incredibly helpful. the headlines i remember are that networks are likely to be richer if they are loose, open, and have random elements introduced. we all have a limit to how much we can network (our monkeysphere) so none of us can really get our heads round the full set of relationships that exist and that’s probably a good thing. each group should probably encourage someone to focus on external relationships and networking as that will bring a richness that flows back to the community… i want to think about all of this some more and maybe i will come back to later.