Build communities, not networks.

A few months ago, I attended a tech event in San Francisco and, given the small world, I met someone with whom I shared a mutual friend.

Conversation gradually steered itself towards the topic of meeting new people through events like these, and then my companion noted —

“I don’t see why people dislike networking.”

I cringe inwardly.

Networking?

It’s a firm-handed, bold word.

It’s a potentially forced smile and a possibly disingenuous interest.

It’s a “you scratch my back and then one day — it doesn’t have to be soon, but definitely at some point in the future — I’ll recommend you to another person who I know will be able to scratch your back, since I scratched his” type of relationship.

It seems like we meet a lot of people nowadays solely for the sake of helping ourselves. We slap a hearty, dressed-up term on it to cover up the fact that we’re not all that interested in making more meaningful connections, and then we’re left with a mess of email addresses, names, and business cards attached to motivations and means rather than conversations and shared experiences.

And then, at the end of the in-person networking, we add everyone we met into our constantly expanding social network.

“Yeah,”

I’ll reply when someone asks me if I know someone superficially.

“We’re Facebook friends.”

Forget about networks, and let’s build something better.

Let’s build communities.

Whether we meet at a hackathon, an information session, a public talk, or an online forum, we — especially students — should be striving to help each other as much as (or even more than) we want others to help us.

Learning and growing is a collaborative effort, and making friends has always, from my experience, proven far more valuable than calling in a million favors.

Instead of simply scratching them all the time, wouldn’t it be great to have each other’s backs?