It's now the Monday after a milestone college reunion a bunch of us decided to go back for. It was a great weekend...tiring, but great. A lot of connections were re-established and other friendships just picked up where we left them years ago. That said, since I've been largely focused on building community for business customers/partners over the past few years, it's hard not to just sit back and analyze the whole phenomenon of college reunions and realize that at the core its really not that different from the connections and relationships that are formed in the business community...online or offline.

Many years ago (let's just go with 10+ :-) hundreds of freshman decended on my college campus (e.g. community) for a reason. Maybe they had family connections to the college, maybe the college was highly rated in an educational area of interest or maybe sports or other scholarships drew them in. Nonetheless there was some level of recommendation, reputation or common interest that attracted students to this college. From there the environment was such that people could easily find groups that aligned with their same core interests. That became our common space or comfort zone. Little did we know that before we would graduate our network of contacts would grow exponentially simply because people in our "common space" would connect us with another social group that shared some common interests as well. From there the web continued to grow organically until the common path bridged many zones.

Of course back then we didn't over analyze it or even think of it more than just extending our circle of friends, but, having just come of a weekend where I had the opportunity to hang out with others who were (and are still) part of my college "comfort zone" and see some of the other circles that I was connected to through a mutual "community" member, I noticed an amazing correlation to what we're trying to accomplish in the social networking space. Even after this amount of time there were still very solid connections between our college community groups. Sure, some may need a little nourishment, but the connections are still there. And, it was interesting to see the interactions going on that will help revitalize those connections. Business cards, e-mails and site/blog URLs were exchanged. It was just a really interesting thing to experience. Of course many of the people there were totally oblivious to that real time social networking happening and the huge potential there is associated with resurrecting those connections again, but they'll realize it soon enough.

I couldn't help but think back to BobReb's "Recasting 'Of Citizens and Pioneers" post regarding his perspective on the broad eras relative to Internet participation -- the indigenous population, the pioneers and the citizens. This past weekend I was definitely hanging out with a mix of indigenous types as well as a lot of pioneers. I'd also throw myself in that mix. Without realizing it, we established a really solid social network (primarily offline) over the past (many) years. Now we're trying to make the leap of bringing that network more online so we can continue to grow it more efficiently and effectively. My kids on the other hand are growing up in a time where the boundary between online and offline really doesn't exist when it comes to communication or connecting with people. I've witness my 10-year old navigating through Whyville, collecting clams by playing their educational games, finding other people in the community with like interests so they can combine their clams and purchase more goods to build out their online presence. There are a number of sites for kids with similar experiences. The interesting part is observing how natural it is for kids on those sites to figure it out and understand the value of building those connections. It's going to be truly amazing to see what's considered "standard" when they all get into the work world, but that's a topic for another day.

For today I'm glad to be involved in driving a shift in building business community from informational to social. And, we don't need to wait until our kids are grown up to see truly amazing things. I think once we can optimize our traditional business communications/relationships for the Web 2.0 world we'll see great things. Social networking isn't just for match making and personal spaces anymore.