Tupperware Parties are social networking royalty so it is no surprise to me that Microsoft 7 soft launches around the globe have come to the party.  See http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/pcs/tupperware-tactics-to-push-new-windows-7-20090923-g1gv.html

Are you sloughing off the bubble economy?  Have you embraced the recession economy?

Do you have a new strategy for life, business, and community activities?  Do you understand how and why these new recession revenue models can and will distort your current capacities and capabilities? 

Are you prepared to continue what you have been doing within the confines of recession economy silos?

Organising social networks is a practical challenge.  Most people who attempt it do so with the tools they have on their workplace bench.  Thus they try to create organisations where none can flourish - the best example is the fashion of creating 'online communities'. 

Communities flourish because the members have a shared purpose, set of values, or experiences.  Appointing a Director/Manager of Communities to better organise these members is now a common practice.  However the role of these managers of communities is never entirely clear.  They are suppose to control these entities but how they intend to do that and why they would want to do that is not apparent, at least to me.  I tried to perform this function in the early 1990s and I found that my efforts were totally counter-productive.  Sure the technologies have moved a long way since BUT importantly the wants and needs of people have not.

I have concluded that social networks are best left to their own devices because they are indeed self-organising entities.  If these entities impact on you, your business, or your communal activities then you should seek constant feedback from them.  Tap into both the negative and positive feedback you can access about you and your concerns from them.  Change your behaviour.  Monitor the feedback.  Change your behaviour.  Monitor the feedback.  After a few iterations of this simple feedback loop, you will realise that the patterns of feedback you are getting is changing and it may well be changing in ways that flatter you.  You will also recognise that you are not in control of these social networks at this point and neither are you organising them but you are organising your activities to better fit the communities you are monitoring.  In turn, the patterns of behaviours from those communities are now changing to better fit your wants and needs.

Speed.  Wireless 4G is all about speed.  Speed of data transmission. Speed of mobile processors.  Speed of machine to machine transfers.  Speed of diagnosis in health care.  Speed of global connections between individual users. What you get with 4G is 5 times the speed of 3G (current smart phones).

Speed.  The biggest change in your world over the next 5 years will be the speed data is processed, transfered, and packaged for you.  You might have an all-in-one wireless mobile device.  You might have a series of specialist mobile devices - camera, phone, navigator, computer, etc.  Either way you will become the target of the C21st digital revolution.

Economic bubbles are fueled by consumers' wants.  Wants are unlimited.  Wants get inflated quickly in bubble economies because people like to mimic others.  Wants are unaccountable.  Wants are never satiated.

Economic recessions are grounded by consumers' needs.  Needs are limited.  Needs get deflated quickly when easy money disappears.  Needs are fully accountable.  Needs are often satiated.

The digital revolution is with us but it is not going very well.  The problem is the people (you and me) who have to embrace it do not really understand it.  Sure we (you and me again) all understand our digital gadgets but we do not comprehend the digital frontier before us for one simple reason - we are analogue people.

Analogue people are prone to serial thinking and sequential actions.  Translate that into mundane life in a digital network and you discover you are too slow with your thinking and too procedural with your actions.