E-Group it!
The internet is the easiest way to stay in touch with people. It is the Petri dish for maintaining social connections. My most favorite social networking tool are my e-groups, which allow people to send out messages to others who are subscribed to a common mail list.
My first e-group was started in 2000 and is composed of friends I worked with for ten years in Manila. It was during a great time when the Philippines was experiencing a construction boom and cement was making a killing not just in the country but in the region as well. We were exporting cement and expanding operations. The company was generous to us with bonuses, training and other benefits. Management was composed of young entrepreneurs who knew how to motivate staff and who inspired us to reach for accomplishments beyond our imagination. When the peso plunged against the dollar in 1998, however, things changed. Management changed and it enforced several phases of ‘downsizing’ the company. Many of the oldtimers were the first to get retrenched while those who management chose to keep eventually took their skills with them and moved on to other companies, mostly abroad. We had set up the e-group to stay in touch and as its membership grew to those outside of the cement company but within the same group of companies, so has its significance. While some members continue to be employed with our previous cement company which now goes by a different name, many are now based abroad – in the Americas, in the Middle East, some are even in Australia or in Europe but the exchanges continue to bridge the distance, 6,000 emails later. We have a photo album site where everyone contibutes regularly and where the years passed are noticeable in receeding foreheads and expanding waistlines.
And there were those that were set-up and just died an almost immediate death immediately after including my high school group and another one with people I worked with in Manila.
I also have a group for my grade school class which was set-up in 2002. While it is fun to put together a majority of the awkward prepubescent people I shared grade school angst online, for a while it was also exhausting as the exchanges were fuelled by teasing, cajoling and not always the immaculate kind of exchanges. Many times I had to enforce the role of moderator to prevent a word war from erupting. Membership is currently at 48 but after 5 years and a little more than 4,800 messages it feels like it is dying slowly out of apathy, its value only to announce birthdays and spring sporadic greetings.
Proudly, the most successful e-group I belong to is that of previous workmates from New York. We had set it up on the week prior to our biggest farewell party in October 2003 and just months before the project was dissolved. Almost immediately, word was spread about it and previous colleagues who were involved in the project many years before and have moved to other countries found ways to get in touch with the moderators to be included in the mail list and it has been a party since. Membership is currently at 117.
I think the continued relevance of the e-group depends on the members’ efforts and interest to stay connected to each other. Of late, one of the moderators of the New York group has initiated a poll of where the next Grand Reunion should take place and when. The responses have been overwhelming and varied but the interest to meet up and get together is fuelling more exchanges and even more enthusiastic suggestions on how make sure that it happens.
With the internet, it is a small world after all.
My first e-group was started in 2000 and is composed of friends I worked with for ten years in Manila. It was during a great time when the Philippines was experiencing a construction boom and cement was making a killing not just in the country but in the region as well. We were exporting cement and expanding operations. The company was generous to us with bonuses, training and other benefits. Management was composed of young entrepreneurs who knew how to motivate staff and who inspired us to reach for accomplishments beyond our imagination. When the peso plunged against the dollar in 1998, however, things changed. Management changed and it enforced several phases of ‘downsizing’ the company. Many of the oldtimers were the first to get retrenched while those who management chose to keep eventually took their skills with them and moved on to other companies, mostly abroad. We had set up the e-group to stay in touch and as its membership grew to those outside of the cement company but within the same group of companies, so has its significance. While some members continue to be employed with our previous cement company which now goes by a different name, many are now based abroad – in the Americas, in the Middle East, some are even in Australia or in Europe but the exchanges continue to bridge the distance, 6,000 emails later. We have a photo album site where everyone contibutes regularly and where the years passed are noticeable in receeding foreheads and expanding waistlines.
And there were those that were set-up and just died an almost immediate death immediately after including my high school group and another one with people I worked with in Manila.
I also have a group for my grade school class which was set-up in 2002. While it is fun to put together a majority of the awkward prepubescent people I shared grade school angst online, for a while it was also exhausting as the exchanges were fuelled by teasing, cajoling and not always the immaculate kind of exchanges. Many times I had to enforce the role of moderator to prevent a word war from erupting. Membership is currently at 48 but after 5 years and a little more than 4,800 messages it feels like it is dying slowly out of apathy, its value only to announce birthdays and spring sporadic greetings.
Proudly, the most successful e-group I belong to is that of previous workmates from New York. We had set it up on the week prior to our biggest farewell party in October 2003 and just months before the project was dissolved. Almost immediately, word was spread about it and previous colleagues who were involved in the project many years before and have moved to other countries found ways to get in touch with the moderators to be included in the mail list and it has been a party since. Membership is currently at 117.
I think the continued relevance of the e-group depends on the members’ efforts and interest to stay connected to each other. Of late, one of the moderators of the New York group has initiated a poll of where the next Grand Reunion should take place and when. The responses have been overwhelming and varied but the interest to meet up and get together is fuelling more exchanges and even more enthusiastic suggestions on how make sure that it happens.
With the internet, it is a small world after all.