Networlding

You're familiar with the tried and true expression "networking," but authors Melissa Giovagnoli and Jocelyn Carter-Miller maintain that it has become an archaic expression when the world now has new models for interpersonal connections.

They have coined the term "networlding."

ExecuNet.com explains: "Networlding is a process that goes beyond networking to create a network of like-minded, value-based people who have mutually beneficial relationships -- not just in support of job search but also to provide greater job satisfaction, career advancement and personal fulfillment."

The timing of my learning about this expression is interesting. Yesterday I was scanning the many blindness and disabilities-related online discussion groups I receive. I was thinking, and later commented to my husband, that blind people, thanks to current communications technology, have an unprecedented opportunity to share thoughts and ideas.

As a result, we can get a better sense of how not alone we are in our experience. We are better informed and can use that knowledge to advocate more effectively for ourselves. Even with the challenges many of us have in accessing online communications, dozens of online discussions have sprung up, several specifically about careers.

When we are isolated, we depend on others for information -- others who often, for whatever reason, choose to control what we know. The now-defunct organization, Our Right to Know Braille Press, was established to offer blind people an alternative to the selections screened by the National Library Service.

An Activities of Daily Living trainer once refused to give me information about a feminist disabilities group because, he said, "I don't want them to ruin you." A large-print book publisher also told me, "Blind people only read westerns and romances," as explanation for why the firm had very few works of science fiction.

Knowledge is power, but the "power line" is freedom to access whatever information you want. Thanks to the anarchic Internet, that access is available like never before. We are in control of the connections we make. Through discussion groups and dozens of web sites, people who are blind, visually impaired or otherwise disabled are instinctually drawn to networlding. And now we know what to call it.

To learn more, visit ExecuNet.com.

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