Chief Networking Officer, Isn't That What I Do?

Stowe's got an interesting pointer to a new hire at openBC. Apparently, they've named a new Chief Networking Officer:

His official job description as the new CNO and Head of Community Development at openBC involves the building of communities based around affinity and encouraging existing communities to take advantage of openBC's services. Hamm will promote openBC to targeted communities around the globe, communicating the indispensable benefits, such as access to the existing global membership base and contact with a large number of decision-makers and opinion leaders. Hamm's first mission will be to oversee the launch of the "Networking Universities": openBC will soon be providing networking seminars together with local training companies on a worldwide scale.

Source: /Message, "Now That's A Title: Chief Networking Officer"

The ironic thing is that this really should be considered a fundamental role for everyone in business, especially small companies also known as startups and bootstrappers. One of the more interesting ways of evaluating investors is in fact based on the connections they bring to the table. Every entrepreneur should spend a good amount of time making sure they are meeting more and more people (not in some haphazard manner, necessarily, but in some form).

I'm often asked why I go to conferences when I could stay home and write code and find other ways to not sleep. The truth is that I value face-to-face meetings quite a bit - call me old fashioned. I've found that whereas many people might know you by name or reputation, if they've got a tangible moment that they can look back on and point to that's something that doesn't fade nearly as easily. Bloggings presented an interesting twist on this since it gets us all involved in an ongoing dialog which almost fakes that interaction on many levels.

Is it any wonder our technologies are focused on how to bridge the gap and convert offline connections into online ones, and vice versa.

P.S. Did he say communities and events? Hmm.. Interesting :)