The Networked Professional- 3rd campus session 10/11/10

The campus session on Wednesday introduced us to part 3 of the module- Professional Networking. We started by each coming up with a list of our own current professional networks that we use. I chose to brainstorm for this idea, which made me realise that I actually have a lot of networks but do not necessarily use all of them all the time.

We were then split into pairs and discussed what each others networks were and had the opportunity to explain to the group what our partners networks were. This then fed into the main task which was to come up with a presentation in small groups by mapping out what our professional networks look like and looking at the what, when, why and how aspects of each.

Our group started doing a brainstorm on our current professional networks that we all use, which we found led to other things taking us off on a tangent.

For example take a social network site such as Facebook. Here you can find friends, colleagues or agents in the business which can then take you to make contact and find about auditions. Or you can join a group or agency and find auditions or jobs that way. This can then lead to you attending an audition and landing or not landing a job. That is just one network that has so many possibilities.

We found all the networks to be interlinked to ultimately landing a job. Therefore our group decided to draw an avatar going on a journey from being fresh ou of college to landing a job and seeing all the possible networks it may meet or come in contact with along the way.

Running out of time our group ended up with a tangled bunch of ideas that we found hard to solidify. We drew the following for our presentation:

You can see our presentation in full on the BAPP YouTube Channel. I think our group had a lot of good ideas but struggled to consolidate our thoughts for a presentation.
I like the group who used the metaphor of an underground station as it helped me to think about how I network. You might be going to an audition and bump into a friend, go for coffee and find out about another audition that takes you on a completely different line to the one you were originally on for example. Some lines may be travelled frequently i.e. contact with a dance friend but may not get you very far and some might very rarely travelled i.e. contact with an agent but going that route may land you something big. We can
also create stops and as time goes on and we become more experienced professionals the bigger our tube map will be.

Something that Adesola pointed out was that getting "a paid job" is not necessarily the ending point or the ultimate goal. We are all on a journey and where we might stop off or detour will shape who we are today. Professional networks are not just a vehicle to get a job but they define who you are when in work and not in work. Having these networks can give us support when not it work and meeting with other professionals makes us have that sense of feeling connected. we have the power to build a reputation from the networks we are associated with and it is about giving as much as receiving. I think this was an important point from the session was that how much we give out is just as important as what we take in.