Are You a Connector?

Feb 17, 2008

by Judith Dinowitz

For many years, I have been searching for ways to describe what I do. My title is "Editor-in-Chief", but it conjures up an image of a person who sits at a desk, letting her minions handle day-to-day business contact, editorial work, and overseeing everything. The title sounds like it's more administrative and ivory-towerish than it is.

After over 10 years in the business (I started working with House of Fusion in 1996), I have finally come across a word that describes all the different jobs that I do: Connector. I came across this marketing concept in WIBO (The Workshop in Business Opportunities - http://www.wibo.org), a business class that I've been taking. As described in Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point (http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/tp_excerpt2.html), a connector is a person who knows lots of people and enjoys bringing different people together. And as I sat in the class, I had a lightbulb moment: Yes - That's me! I am that person who enjoys introducing people to each other and creating new business (and personal) relationships. That is one of my skills. And because of my work in House of Fusion and Fusion Authority, I know a lot of people.

Before I learned of connectors, I would always joke that the hardest part of my job was "the care and feeding of... (Fill in the Blank)." Usually, the blank referred to authors or to members of the ColdFusion community (ColdFusion programmers).

But what do I mean by "the care and feeding of"? I'm talking about food for the programmer's soul: articles, documentation, and encouragement. When you're a programmer striving to find a bug, or solve a problem, or finish a project on deadline, it's hard to keep that sense of positive encouragement and excitement that drew you in to programming in the first place. The sense of community is important to programmers - the comaraderie, code sharing, and the feeling of being part of something greater. This is the food that fuels the programmer's soul. The hardest aspect of any community manager's job is figuring out what food the community craves. What do the people want, and how best can a community leader fill that need?

A business person has the same challenge. Customers are the business person's community. What market is he or she trying to reach? What need is the company's product filling? How can the business best serve the market it is targeting?

An editor of a magazine, whether online or in print, must serve his or her readers first and foremost by picking topics and articles that they are looking for. If I were to publish an article on housekeeping on Fusion Authority, the readership of FA would be upset (and rightly so). That is not a dish of interest to an audience of programmers.

An editor has a second constituency: the authors who write for the magazine. The editor has to help his or her authors create the best articles that they can create. This requires patience, understanding, good communication, and, above all, the ability to listen -- all qualities of a connector. The collaboration between an author and editor, when done right, will create a dish that neither of them could have done well alone.

But the thread that connects all of my various jobs, the skills behind "the care and feeding of", is the desire to bring people together and to be a connector. My interest in people, my desire to help them and unite them, has made me a good community manager and a good editor. Now that I recognize what I really am, I can focus on those elements of being a connector that I did intuitively, and put effort into what's needed, rather than letting it happen on its own.

Judith Dinowitz is the Editor-in-Chief of the House of Fusion magazines and journals, where she enjoys serving up ColdFusion goodness on a weekly and quarterly basis.

Are You a Connector?

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