For the last decade, we have led many varied groups, networks, communities, retreats and clusters. These groups have often pioneered future-focused leadership conversations. They have taken many forms, in many venues. They have often created dramatic, unexpected and industry-changing outcomes.

The action/research themes include key enterprise and diverse SMB activities such as social networks, knowledge management, enterprise collaboration, social media, collective intelligence, prediction markets, semantic Web, organizational learning, customer development, enterprise mashups and complexity science.

The approach is to colonize future-focused network and market themes in day-long conversations. The priority is growing personal relationships. The goal is to scale widespread mastery of new network methods and techniques. This is achieved by fundamentally expanding leadership capabilities and deployment of Next Practices. The outcome is productivity, innovation and overall prosperity.

Your diverse, worldwide action/research leadership network is growing fast. Current population is >12K. Members are mostly executives, leaders and practitioners seeking to benefit from the next great episode of the network revolution.

This year, 2010, it was decided to consolidate all these communities and networks under The Future of Networks umbrella.

We are entering a new era of extremely fast social change and technological advancement propelled by networks. The époque of network singularity is fundamentally altering every dimension of human relationships, organizations, businesses, the environment, civil society, government and entire civilizations.

The mission of The Future of Networks is to continue to lead and expand our decade-long tradition of federated action/research leadership retreats, communities and global networks.

These regional activities trace their origin to Porter’s Diamond. The distributed, day-long retreats or clusters, are based upon the modality of Theory U and Presencing by Otto Scharmer of MIT. The focus is on informal but focused authentic conversation. The elemental dependencies of openness, transparency, diversity and conversation are the foundations.

In spite of the explosion in electronic social media, periodic, face-to-face conversation is essential. Proximate transorganizational collaboration is a cornerstone of innovation, growth and prosperity. In short, it’s key to put the social in social media.

Here is your charter, verbatim, from 1998.

“Clusters are fluid, organic, rhythmic collaboration and open action/research networks. They are ad hoc, spontaneous and proximate conversation. Clusters are 100% led by participants. Colonizing themes in a day-long conversation is your only modality. A Cluster is not a conference. It is not a seminar, training, forum or trade event. It is not a professional organization, framework vendor or consultancy. There are no boards, committees, advisors or certifications. We do not compete and are vendor agnostic. Regional sponsors vary from quarter to quarter. Governance originates from the network only. Above all, Clusters have the highest standards for venues, speakers, meals, participants and thought leadership. The modest participant sponsorship nourishes the network and provides sustainability, independence, rhythm and continuity."

The first half of 2010 was the pilot phase for The Future of Networks. The network is now in full production.  Leadership clusters are syndicating worldwide. Here are some examples of this year’s pilots and future activities.

2010 – Example Pilots (Past)

• Collective Intelligence: http://www.pmclusters.com/Prediction%20Markets/SEA10.htm (SEA)
• Social Media Analysis: http://futureofnetworks.com/futureofnetworks/BAN10.htm (SFO)

2010 – Upcoming

• The Social Enterprise: https://www.regonline.com/DFW101 (DFW)
• Next Practices:      http://www.regonline.com/MHG01 (MHG)

Activities are open, authentic, economical and highly effective. All are welcome. Secure, online, low-cost registration in advance required. Feedback and testimonial is always uniformly positive and enthusiastic.

The Network Singularity blog supports your distributed activities, communities and networks.

http://www.networksingularity.com/

Welcome to The Future of Networks!