ASSOCIATING WITH NETWORKERS
(grin)
Why We Need ENA
by Lisa Kimball

Why on earth would networkers need *another* network? Good question!

My own answer emerged from my experience using multiple conferencing systems over a period of time. I noticed that people on many different networks were expressing the same feelings of frustration about the gap between what they perceived as the potential of this medium and its current status. We all had similar questions about how to encourage more widespread use of computer conferencing, how to make it more accessible to more people by making it easier to use and lowering the cost to individuals, how to make its use more effective by improving our skills at facilitating different kinds of applications, and how to extend the state-of-the-art technically.

Ironically, it seemed to me that we were missing the opportunity to use the very medium which intrigued us to answer some of these questions. People on each network were questing in isolation from the experience and knowledge found on other networks. We weren't *networking*!

I think an organization like ENA can contribute to the medium at many different levels.

For networking systems: Pooling examples of successful applications of computer conferencing would provide us with many more examples to use in marketing and public relations efforts and increase the general visibility of networks with the media and the public.

For networking professionals: Sharing learnings about how to moderate conferences more effectively, how to introduce new users to the medium, and how to conduct professional activities online would improve our individual skills, give us a peer group for support, and increase our credibility as professionals in this new career field.

For organizational network users: Supporting research and development related to networking technology and practice would give us a source of ideas and information about using the medium to improve our organizations as information and communication become a larger part of every enterprise.

For individual network users: Becoming a collective voice would help us preserve the aspects of networking which are important to us like privacy and free speech and enable us to be heard on the many issues which will arise as this new technology develops within our society. Sharing our experience can also help us become better network consumers by providing comparative information about alternative systems and giving us an organization through which we can interact with network representatives and vendors of related products and services.

This may sound like an awfully big task. But, because we are networkers, I think we have some special advantages in tackling it. We can use our widely distributed system of networks and networkers to collect ideas about needs and strategies from a much larger and more diverse group than the average organization. And we can also spread the work (and the fun -grin) out more widely than a group without the communication infrastructure we have at our fingertips. We have a lot of exploration and learning ahead of us as we
experiment with how to use networking in this new way - but I think it will be fun to break this new ground and we can contribute much to our collective understanding of the medium as we organize ourselves.

All we need is *you*! (grin)