The most interesting and practical chapter in Tisch's book for our class was his final chapter. In it, he discusses how partnerships can help people, businesses, and institutions survive during some of the worst crises, much like we're seeing with the financial meltdown of our nation. I just want to make sure we don't lose sight of this notion. Whether it is putting in nodes ourselves or talking with non-profits and institutions throughout Somerville, I think we really need to stress the point that two is always better than one. Having partnerships can honestly lead to the help or demise of an organization. As the ones who are currently making many of these connections on the web, we really need to put our heart into this idea. With our abilities to frame what the website is going to be, do, look like, and contain, we have to remember our responsibility to Somerville and the rest of Boston in recovering from the economic downturn.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Jonathan M. Tisch
I was assigned to read Jonathan M. Tisch's book "The Power of We: Succeeding Through Partnerships" for another class of mine. Yes, this is the Jonathan M. Tisch of who's building we sit in every wednesday night. His book revolves very heavily around the idea of "putting aside our individual concerns in order to work together toward a greater good." (pg. 1). From the second I read this sentence, I immediately began to think about our entire class and map project. The more and more I read the book, the more I began to really realize the immense value that our website could provide not only the city of Somerville, but the rest of Boston and hopefully even further in the future. While many people may think about how partnerships can help them, I truly don't believe that many people and places the real impact of this notion. We've talked about it over and over again, especially when harkening back to Linked, but even we seem to get caught up a bit in simple things like the name of our website and which we like better. Reading Tisch's book made me think on a different note of being in the place of the people that will use our site to really help transform and enhance their organization. I think this is the frame of mind we need to adapt as the semester quickly is coming to an end.
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I know that Jonathan Tisch is coming to speak tomorrow and I hope to attend, maybe he'll address some of these ideas.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with Dean's post. Two is better than one. Making connections and partnerships, something that our map is trying to do, is extremely important in times like today. Likewise, in better times, it is important to continue to build the network, so that for bad times we have links and connections to lean on for help. I can personally relate to this in my job search this year. With the rough economy, I feel like the only thing that matters in finding a job is "connections," and I've really realized the true potential of this.
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