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Yesterday morning I went to a breakfast meeting (yes, it was an American affair ) at a very nice hotel in Mayfair. It was held by a company called Guidewire Group. It was early and I do not do early. However, this was well worth it and I am very glad I have made it there.

Guidewire Group is a name for a team of interesting people - Mike Sigal, Chris Shipley and Frank Kelcz. Their proposition is to create better communication and interaction within what they call an ‘ecosystem’ of innovators, early adopters and VCs, bringing new products and companies to market.

They do this by paying attention to ideas, products and innovation at the pre-capitalised stage and facilitating understanding between innovators and early adopters. Chris, Mike and Frank are behind two events that are of interest to me - DEMO, which is an exhibition/conference that introduces to the world the products and services that will ignite the technology landscape and challenge the status quo and BlogOn 2004 which last year was about The Business of Social Media. No prize for guessing that blogs featured prominently.

So what are these people doing in Europe and London? Bringing the kind of networking that we have seen online, among the innovators and early adopters, facilitated greatly by the blogosphere. Networking and communication is an age-old activity, which, with the expansion of various networks (telegraph, telephone, broadcast, mobile phone, internet) has changed the dynamics of technological innovation and progress. The most recent significant network, the internet, has enabled a whole new ways of interacting and tought us a thing or two about many-to-many communication and the dynamics of network effect.

My main point is that what we have learned online about networking and connecting with others can be applied offline. Transparency, openness, value-for-value transactions that do not necessarily involve money, filtering and learning how to create platforms and frameworks based around the players rather than processes to which the players are beholden to. This is where and what business should learn from online and Guidewire Group consists people who have done just that. Glad you are in London. May you prosper and all your partners with you.