The Circles of Life

Somehow in the midst of grad school, internships, networking and the incestuous intermingling of friends, I became a part of several circles in Phoenix. I define a ‘circle’ as a collection of people that share similar interests and/or professional fields that self-identify as part of a community. Additionally, though they may not personally know all the supposed ‘members’ of the group, they are aware of them and what they do.

The circles that I am particuarly referring to I will call:

- The Public Relations circle
- The NonProfit circle
- The Social Media/Idea circle

It took me a while to realize that they were in fact circles. I started to notice that the people I would meet in my nonprofit classes all seemed to know Sam for example. Then I discovered that Sam knew many of the nonprofit professionals I knew, so on and so forth. After joining YNPN Phoenix, that pretty much cemented my place in the circle. I marketed myself as a PR consultant for nonprofits and now my network seems to keep repeating itself.

The Public Relations circle is soley the result of my internships with the Greater Phoenix Convention & Visitors Bureau and David and Sam PR. The GPCVB connected me not only with travel media but also all the look resort PR professionals. Now those same women I worked with in tourism are my colleagues in IABC Phoenix. David and Sam pretty much covers everything else. Every agency in town knows at least one of the them. Then of course knowing one person from each agency carries over into another…it’s crazy how small these circles actually are.

The Social Media/Idea circle is a recent occurrence. Part of it is mooching off the connections/interests of the Sprague brothers. I tagged along to some of their events and then somehow managed to worm my way into them (i.e. Ignite Phoenix). But that is really all it took. The Ignite community consists of many of the minds behind Social Media Club Phoenix, the various Friday nights (#pfn, #evfn, #lrfn), podcampaz, etc. Once you know the people behind one, you pretty much know them all. They are a very driven, involved group =)

The best part about these circles and perhaps Phoenix? They all overlap. So many people have a wide array of talents and interests that they can hardly be confined to one circle. So that just expands the network. The best visual of these overlapping connections is Twitter. Every new twitter follower I get seems to be connected to either @tdhurst, @ninky, @evo_terra, @samuelisaac, @abbief and so on and so forth. It’s incredible.

So my tips to join the circle?

Social Media/Ideas – Attend at least one of the following: A Friday night event, social media club or ImprovAZ.
PR – Become a part of IABC Phoenix or PRSA Phoenix — then attend the welcome luncheon and become involved in a committee
NonProfits – Get to know @samuelisaac or @azstiner, attend a YNPN Phoenix event or AZ Alliance for NPOs.