How to drive a VAN

As soon as there was more than one computer, the need to join them together in a network so they could communicate became necessary. The LAN – or Local Area Network – came along. If you think about it though, Local Area Networks, have existed for millennia.

Around the campfire, our ancestors would swap tales of where the best hunting grounds had been or boasted about their brave kill. This of course still happens in pubs up and down the land.

Over the last few thousand years, international travel has grown exponentially. Our human LAN’s became bigger and the Wide Area Network came about fostering international trade and collaboration. It was only natural that computer systems would want to talk across continents too – and the WAN arrived in the 60’s in the form of Arpanet, the progenitor of the Internet. Now we have social networks like Facebook and Twitter, our ability to have “pub conversations” instantly and internationally has well and truly arrived.

In a previous life about 10 years ago, I was Head of eBusiness at a company called Vanco. Vanco was short for the Value Added Network company and it added value by looking after business critical WAN’s, Wide Area Networks, for multinationals.

Today, now our networks have gone social but, if you want drive your network so it delivers what you want from it, adding value is the key.

The Value Added Network has arrived … and to learn drive your VAN both well and efficiently, you only have to learn  just five C’s:

Content
Generate value-added content. This means create new stuff or augment old stuff don’t just churn stuff out for SEO. Put retweets in context. Make sure you tweet less than 100 characters so others can do the same for you.

Connections
Make and forge new connections daily. It’s not about the number but the quality. Don’t be sucked in by ego-massaging scoring systems – they are mere baubles. The only measurement here is results.

Creativity
Be creative in your content. When you connect people nodes on your network, make sure 1+1=3 or more and maintain Guanxi at all times.

Congruence
Whatever you do, do it consistently. Be the authentic you not a copy or aspirant of someone else.

Challenge
Push the boundaries. Do something different each day to add value to your connections. Learn a new fact or skill to extend your knowledge and capability.

Please add your thoughts and experiences here – if you can, make sure they start with C …