Blended Networking

18 Jun Blended Networking

I attended an interesting workshop in Birmingham last week organised by BLU (Business Link University) which focussed on the development and use of peer-to-peer learning networks. BLU is a UK government funded organisation that aims to support those working in the SME support sector – primarily government and EU funded organisations that are tasked with raising the capabilities of start-ups and other small businesses. As something like 90% of companies are classified as SMEs it’s a critical area for driving economic performance but actually getting value for taxpayers cash is hard because of the sheer number of businesses which operate in this sector. Until now the support input has been largely advisory, mixed with some basic training and development activities but recent changes to the structure of publicly funded business support has resulted in a range of fresh approaches. One of these has been the realisation that small businesses often learn a lot simply by getting together and talking about their businesses with each other. Clearly business people have always networked – and networking is regularly seen as a key way to promote your business – but the idea of networking specifically to learn things is less well understood.

The workshop was led by a mix of Business Link people and BLU Associates (contracted to work with BLU on various projects) and was heaviliy participative – to the extent that it was hard work for all of us poor participants. That’s the secret of good facilitation – you get to spend as little time up-front as possible. And as a refreshing change not a single PowerPoint slide to be seen – that felt quite weird actually – when I first selected a seat I tried to work out the data projector and screen arrangement. Paul Jackson led the event supported by Jim McLaughlin and others.

Though the event looked at various ways in which networks could both promote and support peer-to-peer learning I was primarily interested in how offline and online networks could be used to support each other. I therefore selected a couple of sessions which looked specifically at using online learning networks. In those sessions we touched on some of the following issues:

Cultural dimension – it’s hard to get those who aren’t into social computing onto a PC – networking to many people is about meeting face-to-face. There are other cultural issues at play as well – for example no women attended either of the online sessions!

Chicken and egg – do you need to meet face-to-face before you can participate in an online network or can online networks act as a catalyst for face-to-face networks? We shared examples of each.

Give and take – learning networks need to balance give and take. Frequently people expect to take and aren’t prepared to give. Successful networks need to manage this expectational mismatch.

During our discussions we decided that a balance between online and offline was probably the most sustainable approach – and we coined the phrase blended networking – which borrows from the language of e-learning,  where blended learning is used to indicate learning that balances both online and offline elements.

A search on Google reveals only 93 pages for the phrase blended networking and none of those sites appear to use the term in the context described above. I’ve created  an entry in Wikipedia to celebrate this historic event!

ExLink: BLU Leadership