Isaac Schlueter is wondering how to get my twitter status in this status box.
I’ve gotten a pretty good collection of geek friends, but it’s not a nerdery with cohesion. A nerdery is a net, what I have is a star where one or two of the points are connected to one another.[1]
I’ve been trying to orchestrate situations where different points will collide with one another. However, I am beginning to think that the way to go from “star” to “net” is just to get a bigger star that collapses upon itself. I really only have so much time to socialize, so adding people to the equation will necessarily lead to multi-tasking, which leads to collisions that don’t involve me.
That’s the goal. Once my nerd friends are friends with each other, we reach critical mass where the group-ness has a value on its own, on top of the value of the individual relationships it is composed of.
Very very few truly amazing things are spearheaded by a single visionary. And, while I’ve definitely got above-average drive and smarts, I’m not the kind of person that people would follow just cuz. People believe me when they see what I can do, but I don’t exude that followee vibe. I’m more Bean than Ender.
Also, single-person driven things are dangerous and fraught with fail. Fellow nerds keep you grounded, can make up for the bits you lack, keep you moving when things start to suck. For the task of doing Something Big (or at least, Something Profitable), a partner is mandatory. And if you can’t get someone to join up just because you’re doing it so it must rock, the next best thing is to pluck from a high-quality nerdery. Float the idea past a few folks, and see who’s into it.
So, to bring this rambly post back to the point…
I’m beginning to think that the circle I have now is of high enough quality, and making an effort to be more social than my instincts tell me is all that it’ll take to get that critical mass.
[1] Net: all the points are connected to all (or most) other points.
Star: one point is connected to several others that are not connected to one another. (Though they of course have connections outside the group.)
