Conversational Networking Reaches Critical Mass

SEO’s have the innate desire to find and exploit correlations - it’s in the blood. Often the things being compared are already related and not particularly interesting but once in awhile two vastly distinct topics meld together like peanut butter and jelly to make a delicious blogwich. Today these topics are VMWare and Conversational Networking.

I attended the local VMWare User Group meeting today in Denver. The meeting was heavily focused on security but they spent a fair amount of time discussing the slew of new products and features they are releasing in the very near future. One product in particular, VMWare 3i, created a lot of buzz. 3i is a stripped down version of their ESX Server product that has a reduced footprint (32MB down from 2+GB for the full product) and can be self contained on a thumb drive or flash memory directly on a server main board. Ok that is cool in a supe geeky way. So what if you can add a new node to your Virtual Center cluster in under 5 minutes you say? What does this have to do with Conversational Networking?

Well first off just becoming a member of a user group requires active participation in Conversational Networking. After your friend’s buddy talks you into becoming a member you then proceed to join the forum. Then in theory you get to network with like minded individuals, share powerpoint slides (yee-haw!) and find out when the next free lunch is going to be served. Once you make your way to an event you get to schmooze with the local VMWare big wigs, get insider information on the hottest topics and hear about all the other great social events you missed like VMWorld Florida.

What does VMWare get out of the deal besides an empty box that used to be filled with t-shirts, demo cds and stickers? Increased sales of for one. It doesn’t take an iPhone to get the geeks camping outside of your business at midnight for the next product launch. The people that show up to user group meetings are the hard core elite and getting the pre-release copy of ESX 3.5 is as much a status symbol as any first release, touch sensitive, music playing gadget hanging off your hip. In addition to sales they get to pick the brains of the best users, the ones that push each feature beyond the original design considerations. Forum members ask the tough questions, push the envelope and probably work about as well as Dell IdeaStorm for generating ideas for new product features and trimming the fat from bloated junkware.

John Battelle’s is pitching Conversational Networking really hard right now. He recently made a podcast appearance on this Cisco techcast to specifically address the changing social networking culture. Cisco, by the way, has managed to insert WebEx as a player in the social media landscape (a bit of a stretch) in their frenzy to “2.0-ify” every title of every article, web site and podcast for every product they sell. It is amazing how far reaching Mr. Battelle’s online marketing influence stretches, even into well established and industry dominant corporations like Cisco. It seems the Wikinomics effect may turn out to be a self fulfilling prophecy. If Proctor and Gamble can use 500,000 moms to design and sell Dawn DirectFoam and Barry Libert and Jon Spector can get the intelligent crowd to write a book anyone ought to be able to tap into the hive mind, as long as they are willing to communicate with the hive.