I've been thinking a lot lately about the best way to go about networking groups of people who share common interests or experiences, whether it's conference attendees, trip alumni, organization members, or whomever. Which is why I showed up at this Online Social Networks panel. I was hoping for some new ideas on how to establish better online linkages and communication channels between the spokes and individuals of an organization.

So I asked the panelists how they'd advise or approach networking a group like Net2 participants. Dimitri responded by suggesting that my question was missing the point because we're already networked through existing social web tools like tagging which enable us to find any content related to Net2. And Ginger added that it's not about the tools, it's about the community.

Still enjoying the buzz from another great meetup last night here in our nation's capitol. Not only did we have a much, much improved location, but we also had an impressive turnout and two great speakers -- Jeff Regen from Defenders of Wildlife and Rosalyn Lemieux from MoveOn.org. 

Check out the roundup that Usha posted here, and then flip through our latest photos (don't worry, we were much happier than some of the photos might suggest)... Any others i'm missing?

A belated update here to say that we had our best NetSquared meetup yet here in Washington, DC this past Wednesday -- at least 23 people came out to Buffalo Billiards in Dupont Circle at around 7pm, and the last person from our group wasn't out of there until well after 10p.

Thanks to everyone's help spreading the word about the April meetup, our group turned out to be a great mix of people from both the tech and nonprofit/social change worlds (and fortunately we're in DC, so we had a plenty of folks straddling both!). I should also note that we had a solid turnout from people doing international work, which added a great dimension to the group.