My chat with Anil cast some of my recent conversations with in a new light.  On Thursday morning I had a chat with James Wu, who manages branding and creative direction at Acumen Fund.  I wanted to talk to James about volunteering with Acumen Fund in the coming summer.  We had a great conversation about design, social innovation, and volunteering for Acumen Fund.

After talking to Anil, however, I started thinking about how my conversation with James is enabled by my network, and how it is also an expansion of my network. Anil talked about how our networks quite literally makes us smarter, by connecting us to new conversations and new opportunities.

In light of that, I think it might be interesting to trace how I got to meet James. James first encountered my work through a blogpost I wrote, which was mentioned by Liz Danzico on her blog. James and Liz knew each other through the design circles in New York. James reblogged my blogpost to his friends on tumblr. Among his friends is Julia, a friend of mine from Vancouver, who now studies in London and often works with Acumen Fund. Julia made a twitter introduction.

Separately, another friend of mine, Jocelyn, recently moved to New York from Vancouver to work for Acumen Fund. I mentioned to Jocelyn that I am interested in volunteering with Acumen Fund. Jocelyn connected me to James, and this time we chatted on Skype to talk about how I might contribute to Acumen Fund.

The funny thing was, I got to know both Jocelyn and Julia through the Young Women in Business (YWIB) network back home in Vancouver, because I was their pro bono webmaster for three years.

Looking back, I entered these networks by working for what I believe in. I worked for YWIB because I believed in doing social impact work. I am at SVA because I care about design. The network I am a part of connected me to James. Through our networks, we now have an opportunity to collaborate on something interesting for Acumen Fund. I didn’t set out to meet James. Indeed, I didn’t know of James until this past month.  Our networks, however, are self-organizing, and it got us connected because we are interested in similar ideas and causes. This is the incredible power of networks.

Going forward, I aim to be more proactive in building my network, and not be afraid of promoting myself and my work. Anil talked about a myth of meritocracy. We want to believe that if we do good work, it will automatically find its way to the people who need to see it. Unfortunately, that’s wishful thinking. We cannot simply do “good work” and hope word spreads.

Spreading the word is part of our work, and it is done through networking and telling our stories.  At its best it also expands our network and lead us to new opportunities. In order to leverage my network, I have to go out and meet people and have new conversations.

Or, as one of my classmates says, “Stop working. Go to parties.”