The Boston KM Cluster was a great success. My partner-in-design, Nat Welch, and I had nothing but positive feedback and responses from attendees. Getting something like together is always an exercise in generation and closure. Generation because you have an idea about how things go together. In this case, once all the topics emerged, we found the theme: Net Work to Net Worth. To be valuable, networks must be worked on — leadership work, design work, collaborative work. That’s the “net work.” Then, you can look at the value that is derived, the “net worth.” We might have stretched that theme out a bit, but it overall worked.

The closure part comes from the clearing out of the ideas that weren’t captured in the agenda, the paths that could have been discussed, the people we might have asked to speak. I always hate that part, thinking that there is a relationship that needs to be identified, that needs to be brought in, and yet the date, time, place constraints left something out.

Fortunately, John Maloney’s KM Cluster infrastructure provides the way for ideas to keep roiling in the soup of current thought. My colleagues Bill Ives and Kate Ehrlich are designing the next Boston Event.

I did a network map of the attendees on October 15th. Nothing out of the ordinary, a dense center of well connected hubs (Gennova folks), with spokes to individuals we had each reached out to in our networks. One unexpected small world connection from a different context: Donna Denio (Center for Balance by Design)realized that Jan Twombly had been her accountant many years ago when she ran her own small business. I saw Donna yesterday morning, and that’s how I found out why that connection existed!