I'm sure most of you have noticed that NetworkInAustin.com is not what it once was when we launched this site in early 2005. This is about to change. Stay tuned, especially around our target date of 9/1/2008.

When I originally launched NIA in April of 2005 it had nearly 100% of my attention. At roughly the same time my first daughter was conceived. Fast forward 8 months to a conversation I had with my wife. We were both running start-up businesses. They were both profitable, but not nearly profitable enough to support our growing family. Since then NIA has been on the back burner and not received very much of my attention.

I'm a little upset with myself that it's taken this long, but thanks to a great conversation with one of my business coaches, Stan Tyler, he made the solution sound all too easy. Since that conversation and another referral Stan provided we're roughly 30 days away from a complete relaunch.

There were some major flaws in my original business model (primarily in the pricing). We've found a simple solution for some of these gaps and I know you're going to be pleased.

You'll certainly find updates on this blog, but for the best source of news please subscribe to the Weekly Referral e-mail newsletter (also about to be reborn).

We're really excited about this new direction and appreciate your ongoing support.

Happy Networking!

-Scott

I learned this morning that my Grandma had passed on last night at the age of 92. In many ways this was a big relief. She'd been in pretty bad shape for quite a few months with a very low quality of life. So I'm glad to know she's finally in a much better place.

When I was younger my younger brother and I were fortunate in that we got to spend quite a bit of time with all of my grandparents. Both sets of grandparents lived a mile apart about 40 minutes from our home in Southern California. Unfortunately my Grandma on my Dad's side, Jane Ingram, was the last one to survive. While we're all saddened by her loss I was so lucky to have all 4 of my grandparents growing up until I was 18.

Grandma Ingram was always a lot of fun. She was the biggest spoiler of them all. I'm sure my parents loved all of the ultra sweat cereals and cookies that she would always have an unlimited supply of when we were around. There was never any doubt that she loved her Grandchildren.

She also had the biggest heart. I'm not sure that my Grandma ever missed a Sunday at church. The same church where my parents were married and she was a Deacon before her health really started to decline. Then after church she volunteered for Meals on Wheels for as long as I can remember. She never missed, and every now and then she'd bring me along. That was a gift.

Sharp and whitty were her middle names. Much earlier in her life she worked at a Women's Prison. There was an incident that she would occasionally joke about. She would say that she was very quick with the trigger, but a little slow on the draw... That was the time she shot herself in her own leg.

I would hope that she counts her son, my dad, and her grandkids as one of her greatest accomplishments. If the way that we turned out is any testament to the kind of woman she was (especially my Dad), then I know she'll go far and enjoy her new home.

We'll miss you Grandma, I love you.

-Your Loving Grandson

In the last few weeks I've been engaged in my own online networking experiment (using social media, web 2.0 or whatever you want to call it). I've been a big fan of LinkedIN for a couple of years now, but until a few weeks ago hadn't made the leap to Twitter, Facebook, etc. You can expect to find a series of posts here about the results of my own experiments. I also feel pretty close to developing my own strategy for leveraging all of these tools as a professional which I'll share with you here as well.

I thought I'd start with a little bit about Twitter. My first impression of Twitter was that these quick little updates were an asinine waste of time. How could writing and following constant updates possibly be productive? I was amazed at how quickly I was turned around. I quickly realized that there's almost no better way to deepen some of your relationships. I have friends who I follow on Twitter who I see in person once or twice a week on average. I'm way more connected to them and what's going on in their lives now that I'm following them on Twitter. Again, I'll write more about this, but this benefit alone makes any and all of the effort worth it.
 
Even more recently I've found that you can find numerous ways to give referrals to and otherwise help those that you're following since you know what's going on with them. In a very recent example a friend and I started following each other on Twitter. I learned that he's intensively working on learning a new technology. Several days later I received an e-mail about a local conference on this very topic. I was able to forward that e-mail and within a day he was registered for the conference. How cool is that? Without Twitter I never would have known that this was even on his radar screen.