What kind of organization is 3 Degrees Connected™ Women's Network? In Cynthia Kersey's book, Unstoppable Women: Achieving Any Breakthrough Goal in 30 Days, she talks about surrounding yourself with people who lift you higher (Day 23). As I read through this material (my second trip through this program), I had the prompting to write this article.
Often time women identify with multiple roles that require her time and attention. We identify with being daughters, granddaughters, sisters, aunts, wives, mothers, best friends, career person, committee member, or Sunday school teacher. Our list of people we claim to be can be overwhelming.
When you think of each of these roles, each has its own criteria that make you feel successful in that role. It is likely that you depend on the same inner circle to provide support and offer feedback in all areas of your life. If you draw on your spouse or best friend for support in the area of your career, you may not like their input. They know you in a different role, should they know how to support you in a role they had little part of creating? Most likely they are focused on many roles themselves.
Finding a support team that understands the nature of what you are trying to accomplish can be helpful. When trying to lose weight, you might find joining a weight-loss program focused on the right behaviors makes more sense than gaining encouragement from someone who has never had to face that obstacle. A support team of this nature would encourage you to take a walk rather than sit on the couch and enjoy a two hour movie on your flat screen television.
Cynthia shares "The University of California at Berkley has demonstrated that associating with successful people improves performance and increases the chance of success. Conversely, associating with unsuccessful or unimaginative people is counterproductive." Building relationships on mutual support or accountability can be very helpful. Not only will you be the recipient of many new insights, you will feel great knowing that you are also contributing to someone else’s success.
Take a look at the relationships you have created and rely upon. What roles have you assigned to whom. Here are just a few examples: nurturing and restoring, allowing you to maintain the status quo, spiritual ambassador, gossip and complaining, goal directed and personal development. What support roles are lacking?
Cynthia explains that there are several areas that one can look for support including: non-profit organizations, professional associations, career centers, personal coaches, your place of employment. We would like to believe that 3 Degrees Connected™ Women's Network is a great organization focused on support. If you have interest in joining us, please check us out. We would love to create a mutually beneficial relationship with you.
This article was written by Rhonda W. Geneva, SendOutCards™ Independent Distributor, and President of 3 Degrees Connected™ Women's Network.
Showing posts with label About Us. Show all posts
Showing posts with label About Us. Show all posts
Friday, February 18, 2011
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
The Next Question - Why Pay for Membership
The next question you may ask is why pay an annual membership fee to 3 Degrees Connected™ to be included in a members only web-based network when there are so many other social media platforms on which someone may connect such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or Ning? We hope the answer will not surprise you as we’ve really been trying to get the message out.
Building a network of women-owned, women-operated business that is cohesive in nature, based on consistent ideals, and growing in numbers is actually harder than one may think. With applications like MySpace, Twitter, or Facebook, people can build business pages, and gather fans, and increase their readership through offering incentives, which I hope we are all taking advantage of. However, what this doesn’t really do is connect us on a deeper level as “business entrepreneurs”, it is a self-serving mechanism. Each business is operating as an independent entity with hopes to gain a greater audience to support their own business endeavors.
In the organization 3 Degrees-Connected™, the mantra should be “it’s not about me”. We are creating an infrastructure to support and encourage one another so we don’t feel like we are walking the independent business owner path alone. With an appointed Board of Directors we will be creating bylaws which govern the direction of this organization. We hope to be a useful resource for making connections, one business owner to the next, and providing resource information to support and grow individual companies.
Membership fees will help us to file for non-profit organization status which will make fund-raising efforts within our community easier. We hope to provide an online support system through dialogue and pay for web-development and maintaining our domain name and trademarks. We will developing an orientation program to train those not comfortable with “online” activities to gain confidence in building their social media strategy and learn how to operate within this ‘ning’ network. We hope that existing business entrepreneurs pave the way for those following in our footsteps to make the road smoother and help others avoid unnecessary roadblocks that stand in the way of their success.
Philanthropic efforts will include joining together as a group of talented women to assist businesses in our community who have lost hope and are in survival mode. We hope that we as women will be the encouragement to other women to continue to follow their hearts and not give up the fight too soon. It’s not about funding businesses, but about offering our expertise. This effort has already begun. We are encouraged by the offering of services, and effort to invest in the success of businesses around us. If we want places to go, places to shop, and services in our local community, we need to begin to address the needs of those businesses. If we don’t who will?
Building a network of women-owned, women-operated business that is cohesive in nature, based on consistent ideals, and growing in numbers is actually harder than one may think. With applications like MySpace, Twitter, or Facebook, people can build business pages, and gather fans, and increase their readership through offering incentives, which I hope we are all taking advantage of. However, what this doesn’t really do is connect us on a deeper level as “business entrepreneurs”, it is a self-serving mechanism. Each business is operating as an independent entity with hopes to gain a greater audience to support their own business endeavors.
In the organization 3 Degrees-Connected™, the mantra should be “it’s not about me”. We are creating an infrastructure to support and encourage one another so we don’t feel like we are walking the independent business owner path alone. With an appointed Board of Directors we will be creating bylaws which govern the direction of this organization. We hope to be a useful resource for making connections, one business owner to the next, and providing resource information to support and grow individual companies.
Membership fees will help us to file for non-profit organization status which will make fund-raising efforts within our community easier. We hope to provide an online support system through dialogue and pay for web-development and maintaining our domain name and trademarks. We will developing an orientation program to train those not comfortable with “online” activities to gain confidence in building their social media strategy and learn how to operate within this ‘ning’ network. We hope that existing business entrepreneurs pave the way for those following in our footsteps to make the road smoother and help others avoid unnecessary roadblocks that stand in the way of their success.
Philanthropic efforts will include joining together as a group of talented women to assist businesses in our community who have lost hope and are in survival mode. We hope that we as women will be the encouragement to other women to continue to follow their hearts and not give up the fight too soon. It’s not about funding businesses, but about offering our expertise. This effort has already begun. We are encouraged by the offering of services, and effort to invest in the success of businesses around us. If we want places to go, places to shop, and services in our local community, we need to begin to address the needs of those businesses. If we don’t who will?
What is Ning?
If you’ve heard the buzz about 3 Degrees-Connected™ women’s network, you’ve probably heard us say “with a paid memebership” you receive access to a members only ‘ning’ network. This network will allow you to create stronger bonds with women in our community through interactive dialogue, creation of a women-owned, women-operated business directory, a page to describe yourself and what is important to you, and a place to share your business goals and objectives. Maybe you’ve picked up one of our networking brochures and wondered what is a ‘ning’ network and how can this really help me?
“Ning” is a social networking site that was launched in 2004 by two co-inventors Gina Bianchini and Marc Andreesen, and a group of angel investors. In 2007 they raised $44 million in venture capital and in 2008 they announced raising an additional $60 million in capital by undisclosed investors. The name “ning” was selected because of its simplicity, it is not an acronym for anything; but after the name was selected, the founders later discovered that the word means “peace” in Chinese. The Chinese language is very diverse and in another version it means “a horrific vision of you”. Let’s hope our experience with this network reveals the peaceful effort of women empowering women.
This networking site allows a group of individuals (3 Degrees Connected™) to setup a social network around some common interest. This network which was programmed in PHP and sits on a Java platform (important to programmers) has both a free and a fee-based application. As a startup organization we have chosen the free social networking version. What this means is that ning owns a piece of real estate in the lower right hand corner of our network where they place targeted advertisements.
With a fee-based network, we can eliminate the “ning” association from our login, and we control the real estate in the space targeted for advertising. I believe that as membership builds, we will select the fee-based version of this Open Sourced software and allow our members to purchase advertisements that support their business development. This premium service also allows us additional storage, bandwidth, and non-ning URL’s.
Bandwidth – a transmission rate which allows the maximum amount of information (bits/second) to pass through a channel . . . in other words, speed of data transmission and collection.
URL- stands for Uniform Resource Locator is a string of characters which identifies an address that directs a user on the World Wide Web to a website, or page. The first part of the address indicates what protocol to use. You might be familiar with “http” which stands for “hyper-text transfer protocol”. The next section of the URL is referred to as a domain name. It is easier to locate a domain name than an IP address which is list of several digits separated by periods which actually locates the website or page on the Internet (similar to the cataloging systems found in our public libraries).
If you are not Internet saavy, don't worry, we are also planning to create orientation sessions to help you navigate through all this social media hysteria. We can assist you in setting up your own social networking page in 'ning' as well as learn other valuable internet tools to help stimulate and grow your business.
For more information about membership, please click the link below.
Membership
Still have questions, please click the link below:
The Next Question
Monday, October 19, 2009
History of this Network
Making the decision to stay at home at age 45 when we adopted our daughter in 2005 wasn't a tough decision. After pursuing a 25 year career in the field of Accounting and Software Implementation, I had waited my entire adult life to become a mother and I was determined to experience as much of my daughters childhood as possible. Two years into this new venture I realized that I was missing a golden opportunity to teach my daughter as a role model rather than focusing all my attention on her physical development, social skills, and scholastic needs. Kindergarten was just around the corner, and soon my daughter would be influenced more by her piers and teachers. I didn’t want to give up the opportunity to teach her how to pursue a dream. I’ve never changed my belief about motherhood, but I did change my mind on how to teach life lessons.
The focus of Geneva Girls Designs is four-fold: (1) teaching my daughter how to pursue a dream, (2) showing her the importance of learning new skills (trying something you’ve never done before), (3) paying for her future educational needs, and (4) serving the needs of others.
In 2007 I designed the Style ‘n Wrap™, a heat-resistant hairstyling tool organizer. When designing this product I learned about what was available in the market place, how to researching market demographics, what options were available to me through patents, trademarks and copyrights, how to write a business plan, how to set up my business structure, what to consider when designing a website, how to build a brand, how to set up product pricing (wholesale and retail), how to use social media, how to attract business through search engine optimization, where to sell on the Internet, who could manufacture my products, and so much more.
In 2009 I looked back and realized that I had been doing a fantastic job with the first two focal points of my business. I was pursuing my dream of operating my own business, and I had accumulated a lot of knowledge in the process. I also realized that there are many obstacles along this path that I had never considered and wished there had been someone to guide me around them. As a former Accountant, I also realized that I was spending resources that could have been used to fund my daughter’s college education and my return on investment was lower than I had anticipated. Women own their own businesses for various reasons, but I’m certain none of us want our businesses to be viewed as a hobby. We want to be taken seriously and we want to be profitable.
Most of my acquaintances knew that I had created a product to help women with hot hairstyling tools, many of them had supported my business through purchases, but I was not branching further outside my immediate connections so my business was not growing. I realized that it is a common problem faced by women who have created home-based businesses. Economic conditions aside, without networking, it is impossible to grow a business.
3 Degrees-Connected™, a networking organization created to bring exposure to women-owned, women-operated businesses, was conceived. The foundation for this network is about serving the needs of others who may be pursuing the same business aspirations, sharing lessons learned and supporting each other through making business connections. Many women have already expressed with relief, that this network was exactly what they were looking for. This organization is still in its infancy, and we will be learning by listening to the needs expressed by our members. We do not wish to re-create existing services, but we hope to share our experience. By guiding other women into services that already exist, talking about potential pitfalls, and offering support and encouragement we hope to help them avoid unnecessary costs and increase their revenue. We do not care whether you operate a franchised business where the infrastructure has already been laid for you, or whether you are starting from the ground up.
If this story resembles you or your business, we would love to have you join us. We’ve held two very successful events, and are starting our membership drive which will allow us to expand our services and create greater connections. If you have any questions, please contact me at 3degreesconnected@charter.net, or president@3degreesconnected.org
The focus of Geneva Girls Designs is four-fold: (1) teaching my daughter how to pursue a dream, (2) showing her the importance of learning new skills (trying something you’ve never done before), (3) paying for her future educational needs, and (4) serving the needs of others.
In 2007 I designed the Style ‘n Wrap™, a heat-resistant hairstyling tool organizer. When designing this product I learned about what was available in the market place, how to researching market demographics, what options were available to me through patents, trademarks and copyrights, how to write a business plan, how to set up my business structure, what to consider when designing a website, how to build a brand, how to set up product pricing (wholesale and retail), how to use social media, how to attract business through search engine optimization, where to sell on the Internet, who could manufacture my products, and so much more.
In 2009 I looked back and realized that I had been doing a fantastic job with the first two focal points of my business. I was pursuing my dream of operating my own business, and I had accumulated a lot of knowledge in the process. I also realized that there are many obstacles along this path that I had never considered and wished there had been someone to guide me around them. As a former Accountant, I also realized that I was spending resources that could have been used to fund my daughter’s college education and my return on investment was lower than I had anticipated. Women own their own businesses for various reasons, but I’m certain none of us want our businesses to be viewed as a hobby. We want to be taken seriously and we want to be profitable.
Most of my acquaintances knew that I had created a product to help women with hot hairstyling tools, many of them had supported my business through purchases, but I was not branching further outside my immediate connections so my business was not growing. I realized that it is a common problem faced by women who have created home-based businesses. Economic conditions aside, without networking, it is impossible to grow a business.
3 Degrees-Connected™, a networking organization created to bring exposure to women-owned, women-operated businesses, was conceived. The foundation for this network is about serving the needs of others who may be pursuing the same business aspirations, sharing lessons learned and supporting each other through making business connections. Many women have already expressed with relief, that this network was exactly what they were looking for. This organization is still in its infancy, and we will be learning by listening to the needs expressed by our members. We do not wish to re-create existing services, but we hope to share our experience. By guiding other women into services that already exist, talking about potential pitfalls, and offering support and encouragement we hope to help them avoid unnecessary costs and increase their revenue. We do not care whether you operate a franchised business where the infrastructure has already been laid for you, or whether you are starting from the ground up.
If this story resembles you or your business, we would love to have you join us. We’ve held two very successful events, and are starting our membership drive which will allow us to expand our services and create greater connections. If you have any questions, please contact me at 3degreesconnected@charter.net, or president@3degreesconnected.org
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Women's Organizations (New Section)
If you are a first time visitor or a returning visitor, we have added a new section called "Women's Organizations" located in the left column of this blog. This section provides links to other women's organizations or resources that may be beneficial to growing your business or learning about what women are focused on.
Some of us may be marketing exclusively to women; others may not. Please leave comments if you have a link you would like us to include.
Some of us may be marketing exclusively to women; others may not. Please leave comments if you have a link you would like us to include.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Why Build a Women's Network?
Growing a women's network is no small task, but in the process of creating one, there are several looming question that I ponder.
This morning while doing some preliminary research I jotted down some notes from women who shared their ideas about joining a women's network. Some of their input, which is shared below all indicates that there is a great benefit to women when networking with one another:
- What value could a women's network have to West Michigan?
- What are women hoping to find that they've not found anywhere else?
- How often would women want to meet in order to make this a useful tool to assist them?
- How should we organize our events or meetings to have the greatest impact on those who attend?
This morning while doing some preliminary research I jotted down some notes from women who shared their ideas about joining a women's network. Some of their input, which is shared below all indicates that there is a great benefit to women when networking with one another:
- I enjoy meeting other women which can provide me with inspiration for my business endeavors. They often know what I’m going through.
- I enjoy the aspect of creating a unified voice which can be more powerful than one person acting alone.
- I am often very uncomfortable in networking events, but at the end of the evening I’m glad that I’ve gone. By taking me outside my comfort zone, it helps me to practice my interactive skills and create good business relationships with others.
- As a small business owner, I often feel isolated and alone. I do not work closely with other individuals on a daily basis, so networking helps me to feel a part of a bigger unit, a family of sorts.
- I have used forum settings on the Internet to network with others, this is an approach I like to take, when I’m pondering a problem that needs to be resolved, it is always good to gain the input from others. I use the network as a sounding board.
- Finding mentors who can help and being a mentor is a very fulfilling aspect of networking with other women.
- The network has a facet of giving back which is a great experience.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Reading is Fundamental to Business Growth
Women's lives are pretty busy with responsibilities that include: work, family, spiritual growth, household maintenance, and the list goes on and on. It can be hard to carve out time for reading which I feel is essential to stay abreast of business strategies and new technologies. I usually operate in two modes: working and sleeping, and not too much of the latter as I age.
Who We Are:
In order to keep this forum (blog) as useful tool for those who choose to stay connected, I will try to incorporate stories that I find relevant and reliable to WBE (Women-Business Entrepreneurs). Most of what you may find here will be "secondary" research or previous published articles, more than "primary" research which is new information accumulated and written by one of us.
That being said, if anyone finds an article that they wish to share on this blog, please forward the information to me including the source and timing for the article. 3 Degrees - Connected™, as a network of women, can grow more when we begin to collaborate with one another and use our accumulated efforts to expand our knowledge.
Relevant News Story:
The following article was published by synergyblog in February 2009. It is entitled: KEYS TO THE GOLDEN DOOR: 10 Steps to Success for Women and Minorities in Business.
This is a very well-written article and provides an opportunity to evaluate your own business-building progress.
Who We Are:
In order to keep this forum (blog) as useful tool for those who choose to stay connected, I will try to incorporate stories that I find relevant and reliable to WBE (Women-Business Entrepreneurs). Most of what you may find here will be "secondary" research or previous published articles, more than "primary" research which is new information accumulated and written by one of us.
That being said, if anyone finds an article that they wish to share on this blog, please forward the information to me including the source and timing for the article. 3 Degrees - Connected™, as a network of women, can grow more when we begin to collaborate with one another and use our accumulated efforts to expand our knowledge.
Relevant News Story:
The following article was published by synergyblog in February 2009. It is entitled: KEYS TO THE GOLDEN DOOR: 10 Steps to Success for Women and Minorities in Business.
This is a very well-written article and provides an opportunity to evaluate your own business-building progress.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Who Are We
3 Degrees - Connected™ is being created to join women together in our community. The initial setup of this network has the following aim:
- stimulate economic growth for women-owned businesses,
- connect women to useful resources for running their businesses,
- create a portal of information that supports women in business,
- tell stories about the women behind the local business creating a personal appeal
- create a directory of women-owned businesses in our local community,
- provide links to women-owned business websites or "blogs",
- offer focus-group support to help make hard decisions about our products or services,
- inform our community about upcoming events
- create a forum for discussion about products or services
- support women's causes
- have fun running our business taking the edge off economic issues
Monday, April 20, 2009
Open for Business
Back in the day when I was growing up, many women stayed at home to raise their children. Life was not easy as women struggled to make ends meet, keep meals on the table without all the modern conveniences, often canning and freezing food from their own gardens. They were raising children with hopes that they would grow up to be responsible and respectful human beings. Women of this time would get together on occasion to support one another over a pot of coffee, or they would socialize through women’s groups found within their churches.
Many of the same networking needs exist today, but women are finding it harder to carve out time to create “girl time” needed to support one another. Many of us are tightening our purse strings to put food on the table as we are living in uncertain times with all-time high unemployment rates. Women are still focused on raising responsible and respectful human beings while encouraging their children to explore oodles of activities some of which did not even exist just 3 or 4 decades ago. Conversations with one another may be limited to brief encounters as we take our children from place to place. Many women have lost touch with their neighbors, especially in climates where we hibernate in the winter. Social media groups are at an all time high, and recent analysis indicates that women in my age group are the largest growing demographic to use these sites. We are missing the all important girl time where we learn about one another’s lives and support each others endeavors. We are replacing "face time" with FaceBook®.
Recently I agreed to host a gold exchange party in my home. I started to review my list of acquaintances and friends. There are neighbors, health club, church, preschool, dance class, swimming lessons, tennis lessons, ice skating (yes my daughter is very active), business associates, professional organizations, friends of the family, and friends of friends. So many women have affected my life in positive ways, that I felt the need to do something more than just ask them to come to my home toting their used jewelry and receiving cash in exchange for the precious gold commodity. I felt like this encounter would do very little to affect the lives of those I’d come to know and it seemed so pointless. A little gold, a little cash, no big deal, and then they would be on their way. These ladies mean so much more to me than that.
I started to think of how my daughter, adopted from China, and I had started supporting women’s business in Asia where a little resource goes a long way. We have aligned ourselves with the goal of contributing funds through an organization called KIVA which matches lenders, to those requesting resources to expand their business. Initially I thought, okay, we will take the proceeds that we gain from the gold exchange party to continue advancing our cause to help women and children, but I realized that we haven’t taken the same mission to heart here in our local community where the need is growing.
After scheduling a cup of coffee with another women-owned business owner who I met through “social media”, I pitched an idea that I had, and her enthusiasm was overwhelming. We could create greater exposure to women’s talents and/or businesses in our local community so that we would know what each other are doing. By making a few small connections, we may be able to stimulate the local economy, share ideas, lend a hand, barter services, and have a little face time too. The Internet is great, social media is great, but lets create a forum that provides multiple events a year bringing women together, showing our accomplishments, letting each other taste, feel, see, and hear what we are doing. Yes, this is not new, but it feels new in our lake shore community.
We started to speculate that there may be some talented women who have never really considered running a business or they may be stifled by fear of the unknown that they are too afraid to start. Those of us who have crossed over many bridges could help those starting out, and those ahead of us, could offer some very sound advice. The network that we could create by just sharing our stories and our lives with other women could make such a difference. Match making shouldn’t be reserved just for those wishing to meet a soul mate, the connections can contribute greatly to the success of women in our local area and beyond.
We've all heard of the "Six Degrees of Separation" which is a theory that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. This theory was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called "Chains."
In 2001, a college professor at Columbia University named Duncan Watts conducted an experiment on the Internet. By sending an email where people were requested to forward the email, he uncovered that he was able to validate this theory.
Most of us are probably more familiar with the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" which is a popular trivia game. In this game someone in Hollywood is linked to another person through their work which eventually leads to someone who has worked with Kevin Bacon. Players are challenged to find the fewest links to find someone who has worked with this actor. This game originated from a comment made by Kevin in 1994 when he said that he had worked with everyone in Hollywood or someone who worked with them. The game was actually invented by three Albright College students. A book, a board game, and Internet game and several spoofs on TV have all been associated with this trivia game made from a comment just fifteen years ago.
Why not create a network of women with the primary purpose of making connections. We will call ourselves 3 Degrees - Connected™ (as we do not want to infer that we are separated by six degrees, but that we are connected through 3°. Women are resourceful, when one woman meets another woman, and thinks about who might benefit from an introduction we start the process rolling. We create a momentum that will very possibly have exponential growth. Won’t it be fun in six months to a year from now to see how we have helped our community? Won’t it be fun to learn of the impact that we have had on other communities? Stay tune and follow this journey with us as we post our triumphs along the way.
Many of the same networking needs exist today, but women are finding it harder to carve out time to create “girl time” needed to support one another. Many of us are tightening our purse strings to put food on the table as we are living in uncertain times with all-time high unemployment rates. Women are still focused on raising responsible and respectful human beings while encouraging their children to explore oodles of activities some of which did not even exist just 3 or 4 decades ago. Conversations with one another may be limited to brief encounters as we take our children from place to place. Many women have lost touch with their neighbors, especially in climates where we hibernate in the winter. Social media groups are at an all time high, and recent analysis indicates that women in my age group are the largest growing demographic to use these sites. We are missing the all important girl time where we learn about one another’s lives and support each others endeavors. We are replacing "face time" with FaceBook®.
Recently I agreed to host a gold exchange party in my home. I started to review my list of acquaintances and friends. There are neighbors, health club, church, preschool, dance class, swimming lessons, tennis lessons, ice skating (yes my daughter is very active), business associates, professional organizations, friends of the family, and friends of friends. So many women have affected my life in positive ways, that I felt the need to do something more than just ask them to come to my home toting their used jewelry and receiving cash in exchange for the precious gold commodity. I felt like this encounter would do very little to affect the lives of those I’d come to know and it seemed so pointless. A little gold, a little cash, no big deal, and then they would be on their way. These ladies mean so much more to me than that.
I started to think of how my daughter, adopted from China, and I had started supporting women’s business in Asia where a little resource goes a long way. We have aligned ourselves with the goal of contributing funds through an organization called KIVA which matches lenders, to those requesting resources to expand their business. Initially I thought, okay, we will take the proceeds that we gain from the gold exchange party to continue advancing our cause to help women and children, but I realized that we haven’t taken the same mission to heart here in our local community where the need is growing.
After scheduling a cup of coffee with another women-owned business owner who I met through “social media”, I pitched an idea that I had, and her enthusiasm was overwhelming. We could create greater exposure to women’s talents and/or businesses in our local community so that we would know what each other are doing. By making a few small connections, we may be able to stimulate the local economy, share ideas, lend a hand, barter services, and have a little face time too. The Internet is great, social media is great, but lets create a forum that provides multiple events a year bringing women together, showing our accomplishments, letting each other taste, feel, see, and hear what we are doing. Yes, this is not new, but it feels new in our lake shore community.
We started to speculate that there may be some talented women who have never really considered running a business or they may be stifled by fear of the unknown that they are too afraid to start. Those of us who have crossed over many bridges could help those starting out, and those ahead of us, could offer some very sound advice. The network that we could create by just sharing our stories and our lives with other women could make such a difference. Match making shouldn’t be reserved just for those wishing to meet a soul mate, the connections can contribute greatly to the success of women in our local area and beyond.
We've all heard of the "Six Degrees of Separation" which is a theory that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. This theory was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called "Chains."
In 2001, a college professor at Columbia University named Duncan Watts conducted an experiment on the Internet. By sending an email where people were requested to forward the email, he uncovered that he was able to validate this theory.
Most of us are probably more familiar with the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" which is a popular trivia game. In this game someone in Hollywood is linked to another person through their work which eventually leads to someone who has worked with Kevin Bacon. Players are challenged to find the fewest links to find someone who has worked with this actor. This game originated from a comment made by Kevin in 1994 when he said that he had worked with everyone in Hollywood or someone who worked with them. The game was actually invented by three Albright College students. A book, a board game, and Internet game and several spoofs on TV have all been associated with this trivia game made from a comment just fifteen years ago.
Why not create a network of women with the primary purpose of making connections. We will call ourselves 3 Degrees - Connected™ (as we do not want to infer that we are separated by six degrees, but that we are connected through 3°. Women are resourceful, when one woman meets another woman, and thinks about who might benefit from an introduction we start the process rolling. We create a momentum that will very possibly have exponential growth. Won’t it be fun in six months to a year from now to see how we have helped our community? Won’t it be fun to learn of the impact that we have had on other communities? Stay tune and follow this journey with us as we post our triumphs along the way.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
