Family is Social Network #1.

We will one day look back and say that “Social Networking” was one of the biggest fascinations that defined this decade.  I’m reminded of a post by one of my favorite colleagues at Forrester, one who really connected with me while I was there, and has the amazing ability to create new profound insight on a daily basis – Jeremiah Owyang – and his posts on family as a social network. [Yes I'm a big fan.]  I wonder if all the social networking behaviors will have a positive effect on the nature of family life.  I would hope that it does.

For better or for worse (though usually for better) most of us are blessed with a built-in social network in the form of our families.  I use Geni.com to create a tree that helped me understand the landscape of my complex and beautiful family.  I think the Geni interface is very easy to use and very well done.  You may know that the Yammer product comes from the same company as Geni — and they clearly understand a thing or two about social collaboration.  The tree resulted in helping us organize a reunion with about 80 cousins — it was an amazing Yehuda-fest at a small zoo owned by a cousin of mine (yes, I have a cousin who owns a zoo where he runs his animal therapy programs — who knew?).  Something that would not have happened a generation ago, at least not in the way it worked for us.

Families are always the source of tremendous emotion — love, drama, expectations, and stories.  And more so than any one employment, venture, or activity – your family persists throughout your lifetime, at least in some manner.  And so I believe that if you want to excel in art of community participation and understand the challenges of real-world social networking in a workplace, then participate in your family life.  You will experience first-hand the challenges of dealing with people who see the world differently, who are motivated differently, and who view technology and communications differently than you.  It’s both wonderful and frustrating; but important.  To the extent you can participate in your family network, you will gain deep insight into yourself and others — that is if you can keep your wits and perspective.  Moreover, it is a worthy investment.

I’m sharing this to let you know that I’m taking a short break from the blogosphere and twittersphere to spend some time with my family.  I’ll be quiet for about two weeks.  And I look forward to emerge refreshed.

I have about a dozen draft blog posts in the queue, so when I return to the keyboard, you should expect discussions about a few vendors, client stories, applications of E2.0 in other industries, and other rants and thoughts that you have come to find on this blog.  In particular I will post some stories about internal blogging (success and challenges found with interesting companies I spoke to in Israel and Brazil), measuring E2.0 ROI (this will be a big post – maybe a white-paper), managing multi-channel collaboration, at least one wiki story, the role of email and calendars in E2.0, lessons from a community manager (or two), coverage of some ECM vendors who are now talking about social alongside portal, and other applications of E2.0 in health care and government.  All these are queued up and waiting for editing and publication.  

For all those who celebrate spring holidays or one form or another, may you enjoy the change in season, the warmth, the Sun, and most importantly those whom you call family.  I’ll see you soon — after I spend some good healthy family time with my number #1 social network.

Tagged as: family, social network