On Networking and Not working ...

Hi,

A deep, sincere and heartfelt apology to all of you who have been sweet and stern (:-)) and definitely correct in reminding me that the output of the blog has been on a decline in this financial year (since March). No excuses,it was one of the normal pressures of time of adult life - the ushering in of several little sundry activities which were unavoidable. And of course our tryst with finding a domestic help (!) for taking care of our child.

The interesting part of ‘connecting back’ is the way we naturally pick up the threads and twines and run around tying things back in place. ‘Connecting back’ itself is a phrase I pick up from a good friend and colleague who uses the word effectively and truly understands the word – Networking! While we normally use the epistemology of the word more, ‘net – working’, and usually do the rigmarole of sending a mail rather than truly connecting through a meeting face to face, there is something worthwhile even in the occasional mail. Whenever I go to into a shell blaming it on too much work or busy travel schedules, I remind myself that connecting with others is something as essential as a daily hygiene activity. I have in the past insisted to a lot of my juniors and ‘attentively listening clients’ that there is no substitute to keeping in touch with people to have a ‘world’ view of things and know what is happening around you. And with communication costs reaching the rock bottom, we now don’t have the excuse of ‘costly exercise’!

With this emphatic moral cause in mind, I paid a little more than warranted attention to a client’s mail asking to connect on Yaari.com. Once I opened the site, the geeks behind the site had a mail send on my behalf to all the hapless members of my address book and on my Inbox. Fortunately I was online for a while longer to realize the faux pas, and send mails to my college groups and the few clients on my private mail box. Obviously some of them confirmed that they have already had a similar experience and we exchanged a sheepish chuckle.

In the past couple of weeks, I have still been bombed with more requests and the like from the names of friends with highly emotional mails ‘ X is having sleepless nights since you have refused to connect to him’, ‘Y is fallen sick in depression because Rajesh Nair refused to connect to them’ ! My heart is with all those who have fallen prey to such sites and the immense embarrassment they have to go through!

Having said that, I don’t want to enter into a spiel maligning networking sites. I use LinkedIn quite often and have often suggested friends to do the same. I have stayed clear of Facebook since I have heard the addictive facets of the site and don’t want to get into another time stealer as of now, however good the site is. Times launched Peer.com and I connected more out of obligation to the guy who send me the invite rather than an intention to use the site. The infusion of these sites and their time stealing facets has given the English Lexicon a new word – “Notworking’ – a characteristic of various net junkies who effectively spend most of their working time on the networking sites and land up NOT Working !