I got a couple of reminders in the past weeks about just how small a business this is and the importance of personal connections. But this time there was a twist. First, one is more music-oriented. As I have written about before, I am one of those stupid guys who refuse to give up playing music in addition to magazines and Web stuff and the occasional audio gig.
So, I am rehearsing the rhythm section the other night, and we have a new drummer and our sub bass player who had never met before. My drummer is an IATSE carpenter turned business agent. A couple of weeks earlier, he told a story about something that happened on a Streisand tour. I mentioned that I knew Patrick Stansfield (the noted production manager who did many tours with Ms. Barbra) from working on the Parnelli Awards. He came up with a good Patrick story and then told me to say hi. “He won’t remember my name, but just tell him I was the third carpenter on the ’94 tour. It’s a joke — they used to call me that even though there were only two carpenters on the show.” So, next Parnelli meeting, I told Patrick and, sure enough, he remembered.
But back to the other thing. This drummer has an unusual and very Italian last name. Bass player says, “I went to high school with a guy named Boreffi.”
“Yeah,” Mike answered. “Where?” It turns out that these guys were from the same small town in upstate New York, went to the same schools, played the same clubs and had dozens of friends in common. We got little done that night as they talked about the “old neighborhood.”
A few days later, a friend asked me to introduce him to someone who has a hand in some of the hiring around town, which I agreed to do. I introduced the two and they did the “sniffing around’ thing we all do when we are trying to figure out if someone is a legit member of the tribe or just a wannabe. They both dropped names. “Do you know so-and-so?’ and “Yeah, I worked with him at such and such venue.” Finally, the one with the hiring power brings up a name and my friend says, “Hell yes, I know him. I used to be his bartender.” And just like that, he was in.
Look. there's a chicken…
I have brought up before, a book called Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines Social Systems and the Economic World. It is a book that I have read and put aside and picked back up for years. I still haven’t finished it, but I am close. (BTW, the author, Kevin Kelly, has made it available to read for free online at www.kk.org). In a chapter on artificial evolution (evolution that takes place inside a computer), he notes that the process of evolution speeds up by a lot when communication between “organisms” is introduced. And as more organisms or nodes in a universe are connected, the rate of evolution continues to increase, which, as uber-connected tech folks, comes as no surprise. But that only works to a point.
At some point that upward trend in rate of change peaks and then begins to fall, and the graph ends up looking like a hill. At some point, “the universe” becomes too connected, and as connections continue to grow, evolution slows down to what it was with no connection.”
As I sit here at a computer that checks five e-mail accounts every 10 minutes and have a Skype session and four IM services active all while I am writing this, (oh, and charging my iPhone…) the idea of too much connection strikes a real nerve. In fact, Kelly acknowledges as much noting that those of us who have tried living a totally connected lifestyle have found ourselves disconnecting in order to get anything done.
So, back to my first two examples: In the first one, each of the guys was both connected to a bunch of the same people, but it didn’t result in any tangible benefit. In the second, two connections — one to someone with hiring power and one with a guy in a bar — may mean some significant work for my friend.
It is hard for geeks like me to remember, but it is usually the quality of our connections that count, not sheer numbers. Keep that in mind when you are “networking.” Knowing everyone doesn’t help a lot. Knowing the right someone can. Now excuse me, my cell phone is ringing, I just got new e-mail and I think the Skype session just beeped at me…
