Cultivating Useful Connections

Networking

This is the first in a series entitled "Nomadic Encounters" - stories of cool projects seeded, germinated, and cultivated through encounters at Office Nomads.

When you get asked to a networking event, do you think "Cool! Free wine, cheese, and interesting new people!" or "Oh no! Cheesy people whining and trying to sell me things!"? That's the dilemma Office Nomads faced – we know our members love to connect and create useful projects, but should we call it networking? "Networking" short-changes the real connections that happen within our community, and so instead we'd like to introduce you the first of many stories of "Nomadic Encounters."

One project happening now is a member-driven idea called TheNumad Program (it is an evolution of the Nomad-in-Residence Program if you remember that one). We selected one individual who was embarking on a professional transition, gave them a discounted resident membership, and most importantly collected a team of members who were interested in volunteering their time to help the “Numad” gain traction in their transition during a three-month period.

Our first Numad is Mandy Egle, a grammar and pronunciation coach for non-native English speakers. While Mandy is an expert possessing magical knowledge that unlocks the secret of saying "my car" differently from "mike are" – one that works fantastically whether your brain was wired listening to conversations in Bangladesh, Senegal, or Buenos Aires – she lacked the technical and business skills to upgrade her website, pronuncian.com, into the best tool for learning.

"I'm forging ahead but I don't know what I'm doing,” said Mandy. With the help of other Nomads like intellectual property attorney Mike Morita, designer and engineer Trevor Smith, financial analyst Javier Soto, game developer Pat Kemp, and myself, Mandy is creating a project plan to achieve her dream, a site "that learners can really interact with and learn from in a profound way.” One that includes gamification so learning is more engaging for students.

"As a teacher, I have a list of students’ excuses for why they aren't advancing,” Mandy told us. From this she has been able to develop a number of tools and podcasts to help them practice more effectively when she can't be there.

And while pronuncian.com has been around since 2007, and now gets 70,000 visits per month, she wants to make that system more useful and available to students that live nowhere near Seattle. "We called it Project Morocco, because our vision was to enable Mustafa in Marrakesh to be able to speak as well as Cho in Seattle."

What's the goal? To double the usefulness of her site, to better help students around the world develop American English fluency so they can tap higher paying jobs, and to be virtually available 24/7/365 so she and her family can spend more time sailing their 37-foot cat-sloop named Rosie around the Salish Sea and Pacific Ocean.

Over the next few months, Mandy will meet with her team and develop a plan to make her transition happen. And I'll be writing about it here; so stay in touch!

Kevin Owyang is a member of Office Nomads and Digital Strategist for Game-Changers. When not developing new strategies to amplify social entrepreneurs across new media, he can be found making independent films or hanging with his dog on Capitol Hill.