Beth’s Blog

The Power of Curation

Guest post by Paula Goldman

The wisdom of crowds, the insanity of crowds.

Mention the word “network” to most people and their reactions tend to sway between these two polar extremes. It’s either “crowdsourcing is the answer to everything” –or it’s a complaint that social networks like Facebook and Twitter are just “too full of chatter.”

If I have one takeaway from the GEO/Monitor Group conference on Networks earlier this week, it’s about how crucial the curator is in determining the difference between a successful network and one that simply makes lots of noise.… Read More

The New and The Unknown

Guest post by Kate Wing

We’ve all been in a meeting where someone new to the field sits down at the table and says, “Wow – why don’t you all do it this way? Haven’t you ever thought of this?” about a topic where yes, the rest of us in the room have been thinking about this for a long, long time.… Read More

Relationship Building as a Measure of Impact

Guest Post by John Esterle

One of the themes raised up as the GEO/Monitor Institute conference came to an end was the importance of  trust and relationship building in networks. Indeed, that was my theme for the day given that I facilitated a couple of morning conversations on that topic and then in the afternoon heard Ify Mora from the Barr Foundation (http://www.barrfoundation.org/) talk about how they use social network mapping to capture the relationships that have been built through their innovative Fellows Program.… Read More

Network Leadership: A Few Ingredients in the Secret Sauce

Guest post from Kathy Reich

For a while I’ve been puzzling over what makes a good network leader. The traditional models of organizational leadership clearly don’t apply, but then, which models do? The Grantmakers Gathering on Networks provided a few a-ha moments for me about network leadership:

1. The first leader or leaders in a network are like first responders at the scene of a crash—they’re in charge of making things happen until the structures get set up to fully address the situation.

… Read More