The world was always small

Last weekend, I traveled to Washington DC with my relatives visiting me from abroad, for a tour.

As we entered the Rotunda of the US Capitol Building, I saw this oil painting "Surrender of Lord Cornwallis", depicting British Major General Charles Cornwallis who lost a major battle during American revolutionary war in the eighteenth century.

The name Cornwallis rang a bell as I have read the History of India.

Did a quick check on wiki and yes, he was the same Charles Cornwallis who was later appointed as the Governor General in India, by the East India Company !

Online networking event

A business networking concept is as American a concept as Baseball.

Here, people affiliated to an industry or business gather to meet others with common interests. One tries to meet maximum number of people and get their contact details for a follow up later. The discussions are pretty straight forward as people ask direct questions and express their needs.


I was recently invited to an online writers' networking event, and I decided to participate out of curiosity.

As I logged into the event's website, it immediately connected  me to another person for a chatting session and displayed his background details to me. The person was very direct in what he was looking for. After I completed my discussion with him, I clicked the "Next Person" button. As all other people were busy chatting, it took the software engine a few minutes before it could find another person and connect me to that person.

Overall, I found the concept to be a very viable concept as it saves you from traveling for such events. The feeling was almost the same as a real networking event. The experience can be enhanced using video and sound, but perhaps the text chatting is more effective.

Social networking appliance

There is a tug of war going on between internet users who want to guard their privacy and the social networking sites that want to profile these users. Any internet based website would be utilized for profiling.

An alternate model for social networking would be a plugin device, with high degree of security features. This would provide direct user to user interaction, removing the need for any middle tier or the hub from the hub and spoke architecture.