I seriously doubt I could pull that off - although that's the one day of the standard work week where the concept could conceivably succeed for me. One problem is that it's not enough for me to say to my dev team - "Okay, no email today. If you want something, go talk to that person ftf." I don't have that kind of leverage over our peer teams. Let alone our other internal and external customers who might still email us that day and expect a quick response. Then again, over some teams, maybe I do have that kind of leverage, at least indirectly. Plus we could always set an OOF to explain what's up. Might be worth trying.
This popped into my mind when I was reading this blog post about a talk Linda Stone recently gave in San Franciso. Actually, the more interesting part is the feedback discussion at the end of the post. I'm sure Linda's talk was great though - I wish I would have known about the Supernova conference this year; looks cool.
I thought about Linda Stone because I've been reading one of these "self-help"/business books. It's called Never Eat Alone, and it's been good for me because it reflects my own passion for cultivating meaningful connections between people. I wouldn't even call myself a good Networker. It's just that I enjoy helping people make connections with other people. I'm not even certain that I'm particularly good at even that part. But I really like doing it! So I thought to myself, I wonder if there's a way to make a career out of doing that?
And then I remembered meeting Ms. Stone at Microsoft some years ago. If memory serves, I was kind of an asshole at that meeting, because I was mad that the company's various outreach programs had been, at least up to that point, unwilling to sponser our involvement in US FIRST, which I took to be a significant wasted opportunity. Anyway, in terms of helping people to make connections, Ms. Stone has quite a reputation. I figured that if I believe a single thing that book is saying, I should try to arrange a meeting to seek her advice.
