Debora Schultz, former marketing director at Six Apart, has a presentation called “Stop yelling and start weaving. Communicating in a relationship economy”.

Schultz talks about the fact that the medium is the relationship. More and more people are moving away from email in the direction of instant messaging, chatting and even Twitter. You are connecting anywhere at anytime. We live in a relationship economy which centers around relating online. Sadly most organizations are silos and organisational driven. A couple of years ago you were active on just a few social networks. Now we are weaving between networks and around. Schultz has some advice for your weaving

• be real
• jump in
• get transparant
• find your communities - online and offline
• be a catalyst
• know when to ‘let it go’
• be human - multidimensional
• create oppurtinities to socialize
• the love you give is equal to the love you get
• listen.rinse. repeat

What this list shows is that  even online communication has to answer to basic communication rules. Being true, honest and sincere is online just as important as offline.  Techology changes, humans don’t. A question out of the audience asks how you maintain 5000 friends. Schultz answer is that we have to redefine the concept of friends. Think more of them as contacts, you don’t need to contact them every day. But you still need them to live a full online live.

See www.deboraschultz.com