Making connections in Seattle

One of the first things I did here in Seattle was volunteer to give a little talk about 2People at the monthly Planetwork meeting. Planetwork is a "convening organization" that aims to bring people together who are interested in applying networking (web, internet) technology to create large-scale global change. Pretty good fit for what we're doing, eh? They have monthly meetings in a number of cities, but not in Boston, so this was my first opportunity. The meeting was small, and my allotted time brief. To me it felt surprisingly superficial -- a quick little talk, a brief discussion, and then on to a smorgasbord of other (random) topics. I guess I have to get used to the idea of a kind of sampler plate approach to networking. But just to attest to the power of this approach, I did connect with a woman there with deep ties to Indymedia, who the very next day invited me to be part of a large, brainstorming meeting convened by some amazing folks at Seattle Biotech Legacy Foundation.

About 100 of us spent 4 hours together, in various structured and unstructured processes, getting to know each other and beginning to brainstorm about visions of a sustainable future and how to get there. As you'd expect, nothing specific came out of this first meeting. But I'm totally jazzed that we were there and that there's an opening created to bring this group of people together. So many resonances with 2People, and what we're working on -- I kept hearing people looking for ways to build community. A fine start to my stay in Seattle...