CMI North West - now on Linked-In

Hi Wayne, a valid point - one which the NW volunteer network discussed at the last NW regional forum. I'm not much of a salesman, but i'll do my best to give the rationale.

I should start by saying that the Linked-In group is not designed to compete with these discussion forums, in fact these threads will populate much of the discussion. Therefore the group should act as a showcase for the forum.

That said, it is unfortunately the case that branch discussions tend to run in isolation, indeed the only reason that we are having this discussion now is that I, as a Lancashire branch member, popped onto the Manchester forum to let everyone know about the Linked-In group. All of these discussions will feed into the group, providing a more timely opportunity for NW members to read about activities that are happening outside their branch. It is also the case that the more proactive branches will have already decided to set up their own social networks, possibly fragmenting these discussions further, whilst some branches are struggling to discuss anything at all (for a host of understandable reasons, I might add). The conclusion we reached at the NW meeting was that our best chance of success of engaging with CMI members and other stakeholders across the North West lay in setting up regional platforms and concentrating our combined efforts on making this group as attractive as possible.

In the short term I am hoping that my fellow branch officers and I will think of as many interesting topics as possible to whet peoples' appetites and engender debate. In the medium-to-long term I would like to think that the community will become rich enough to drive itself (much like the main CMI Linked-In group), perhaps under the guiding hand of a NW communities co-ordinator.

That is the logic, but of course the question I should ask is how can we attract you to the group? Is there anything in particular you would like to see?

Hi Matt, we will certainly be doing a lot of that!

The one advantage that the Linked-In group seems to have over the discussion boards at the moment is that the discussions from each of the branches flow into one place. You can, of course, contribute to the discussions on any of these branch forums, but unfortunately the six separate strings result in a fragmented regional picture.

This is still the better area for local news and discussions, but I prefer using the Linked-In group to find out what else is happening in the NW.

A really useful link Adi, thank you.

Is there a quick way of accessing the new posts from the home screen, or is it better just to bookmark the link?