Dear Colleague,

Here is the latest version of Phil Agre's excellent document for
doctoral candidates and doctoral advisors. It is titled Networking on
the Net, but it has grown to encompass many important topics for
doctoral candidates and recent graduates starting a research career.

If you have not yet read it, you will find it filled with useful advice.

Prof. Agre is always updating and expanding the drafts of this
document, so you may want to check in at his web site if you want
later versions.

http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/

This is a long document in sections. I have divided the transmission
into posts.

It will also be archived on the JISCMAIL PhD-Design Web site at:

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/phd-design.html

The contents are

Agre: Networking on the Network 1/4

1 Introduction
2 Networking: What and Why
3 The Basic Steps
4 Electronic Media: Some Cautions
5 The Role of E-Mail

Agre: Networking on the Network 2/4

6 Building a Professional Identity
7 Networking and Your Dissertation
8 Academic Language

Agre: Networking on the Network 3/4

9 How to Get a Job
10 Advising Others
11 Understanding the Research World

Agre: Networking on the Network 4/4

12 Positive Leadership
Appendix: Some References on Networking
Acknowledgements

Season's greetings and best wishes for 2002.

Ken Friedman



NETWORKING ON THE NETWORK

By Phil Agre

Phil Agre
Department of Information Studies
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California 90095-1520
USA

[log in to unmask]

http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/

This is the version of 16 December 2001.

The most recent version can be found on my home page.

55000 words.

Copyright 1993-2001 by Phil Agre. You are welcome to forward this
article to anyone for any non-commercial purpose. For more copyright
information, see

http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/copyright.html


Please send me any comments that might improve future versions,
particularly if you have tried putting my advice into practice.

"Networking on the Network" includes good advice accumulated from
dozens of people over many years, and I want to get it into the
hands of every PhD student in the world. If you could help me out
with this goal, I would much appreciate it.


1 Introduction

Several million people employ electronic mail for some significant
portion of their professional communications. Yet in my experience
few people have figured out how to use the net productively. A great
deal of effort is going into technical means for finding information
on the net, but hardly anybody has been helping newcomers figure out
where the net fits in the larger picture of their own careers. These
notes are a first attempt to fill that gap, building on the most
successful practices I've observed in my twenty years on the net. I
will focus on the use of electronic communication in research
communities, but the underlying principles will be applicable to many
other communities as well.

Some cautions. Everyone's life is different, cultures and disciplines
have their own conventions, and it's all just my opinion anyway.
Don't interpret my advice as absolute rules of etiquette or morality,
but rather as a resource in figuring out your own personal way of
getting around in your particular professional world.

Section 2 introduces the rationale behind professional networking and
explains why it is not just "politics". Section 3 provides a simple
six-step model of the networking process without reference to
electronic media. Section 4 introduces the use of electronic media
for building a professional identity, with particular attention to
some common mistakes. Section 5 then revisits the six steps of
networking and explains how electronic media can (and cannot) assist
with them. It also explains how to network when you cannot raise the
funds to travel adequately. Section 6 considers several advanced
topics: noticing emerging themes in your area, using consultation to
organize things, ensuring that you get proper credit for your
contributions, learning to engage professionally with people from
different disciplinary and cultural backgrounds, and deciding where
to publish your work. Section 7 describes the relationship between
your professional network and your dissertation. Both of them pertain
to the process of knitting yourself and your work into a set of
professional relationships. Section 8 reveals the mysteries of
academic language. Section 9 explains how to get an academic job,
building on the networking you've done and on the concepts that
underlie networking. Section 10 assumes that you have established
yourself in the research community and introduces the topic of
advising others. Section 11 presents a more advanced theory of
networking, including the process by which research fields become
institutionalized. Section 12 then examines the moral issues that the
process can raise. An appendix provides an annotated bibliography of
books and articles on the topic of professional networking.


2 Networking: What and Why

The first thing to realize is that Internet-world is part of reality.
The people you correspond with on the network are real people with
lives and careers and habits and feelings of their own. Things you
say on the net can make you friends or enemies, famous or notorious,
included or ostracized. You need to take the electronic part of your
life seriously. In particular, you need to think about and
consciously choose how you wish to use the network. Regard electronic
mail as part of a larger ecology of communication media and genres --
telephone conversations, archival journals and newsletters,
professional meetings, paper mail, voice mail, chatting in the
hallway, lectures and colloquia, job interviews, visits to other
research sites, and so forth -- each with its own attributes and
strengths. The relationships among media will probably change and new
genres will probably emerge as the technologies evolve, but make sure
that you don't harbor the all-too-common fantasy that someday we will
live our lives entirely through electronic channels. It's not true.

One might engage in many forms of communication on the net --
one-to-one electronic correspondence, network discussion groups, Web
publishing, and so forth. And these interactions might be employed as
part of a wide variety of professional activities: sharing raw data,
arguing about technical standards, collaborating on research
projects, chasing down references, commenting on drafts of papers,
editing journals, planning meetings and trips, and so on. Underlying
all of these disparate activities, though, is the activity of
building and maintaining professional relationships. Electronic
communication is wasted unless we use it to seek out, cultivate, and
nurture relationships with other human beings. Unfortunately the
existing mechanisms for electronic interactions, by reducing people
to abstract codes (like "[log in to unmask]"), make it difficult to
keep this deeper dimension of interaction in mind. Still, there's no
escaping it: if you aren't consciously building relationships, you're
probably getting lost.

At the most fundamental level, then, most of my advice has nothing
intrinsically to do with electronic communication at all. My real
topic is not (technological) networks but (professional) networking.
Therefore I'll discuss networking in a general way before describing
how electronic mail can accelerate it.

In the past, the only ways to learn networking -- not just being part
of a social network, but having the skills for systematically seeking
out and becoming acquainted with new people in the service of
professional goals -- were to be born to a socially well-connected
family or to apprentice yourself to a master of the art. And even
though the term "networking" became fashionable during the 1980's, it
is only recently that really useful books on the subject have begun
to appear. (Some of these are listed in the appendix.) Many people
resist the idea of networking because they associate it with "playing
the career game", "knowing the right people", "kissing up to the
powerful", "cynicism", or "politics", or because networking
supposedly takes time away from "getting real work done". Some people
grew up being told the dangerous half-truth that "if you do good work
then you will be rewarded", as if rewards magically appear whether
anybody knows about your good work or not. Others are allergic to the
Machiavellian overtones of "How to Win Friends and Influence People".
Indeed, people will accuse you of all sorts of terrible things if you
admit to having worked-out ideas about networking. Many people,
watching the real networking experts in action, assume that they must
know some dark, inaccessible secrets that make it all easy (they
don't). This is all terribly unfortunate, not least because it helps
to stratify the world of research: networking is about community, not
hierarchy, and people who don't learn to network are less likely to
succeed.

The truth is that the world is made of people. People out of
communities are like fish out of water or plants out of soil.
Research of all kinds depends critically on intensive and continually
evolving communication among people engaged in related projects.
Networking cannot substitute for good research, but good research
cannot substitute for networking either. You can't get a job or a
grant or any recognition for your accomplishments unless you keep up
to date with the people in your community. Establishing professional
relationships with particular people and involving yourself in
particular professional communities will change you: not only will
you internalize a variety of interesting points of view, but you will
become more comfortable in your writing and speaking because you will
be engaged in an ongoing conversation with people you know. And if no
community is waiting for you, you will have to go out and build one
-- one person at a time. This "overhead" can be a nuisance at first,
but none of it is terribly difficult once you get some practice and
really convince yourself that you cannot sustain your professional
life without devoting about a day per week to it.


3 The Basic Steps

Here, then, are some of the fundamentals of professional networking.
They will sound cumbersome and abstract. You'll be able to skip some
of the steps as you get established in your field (or if, unlike most
of us, you can charm rooms full of strangers in twenty minutes), but
if you're starting from zero then the process really is this
complicated.


(1) Know your goals.

Getting tenure? Being invited to conferences overseas? Filling your
life with intelligent conversation? Developing leadership skills?
Supporting worthwhile initiatives on exciting topics? Getting and
keeping the resources to do the work you choose without artificial
constraints? Clear goals will help you maintain focus. And, in
planning your research career, know what you care about. Don't follow
fashion. Don't imagine that the world compels you to work on certain
topics or talk a certain way. First things first: once you can
explain what you care about, then you can build a community of people
who also care about that. That's what networking is for.


(2) Identify some relevant people.

Awful as it sounds, "relevance" here is reckoned in functional terms:
given how your particular professional world operates, with whom do
you have a mutual interest in making contact? In the world of
research, mutual interest is almost always defined through the
content of your research: you wish to contact people whose research
bears some important relationship to your own. Your network will thus
consist, more or less, of the people whose work you cite, at least
the ones who are still alive. And when you cite someone's work, you
should form the intention of adding him or her to your network. But
how do you identify these people? Most of the methods are wholly
mundane: asking people with good networks, chance mentions of people
in conversation, and the habitual scanning of bibliographies,
abstracts, and conference proceedings. Get used to these mundane
practices before you explore anything fancier.

Here is a way to think about it. Let us say that your research
involves ethnographic study of grade-school teachers' strategies for
including computers in their lessons. While you must certainly
identify any other people who conduct research on that exact same
topic, you should also cast your net more widely. Start by chopping
your research interest into pieces; the pieces might be "ethnographic
research in classrooms", "research on teachers adopting computers",
"strategies for including computers in lessons", "ethnographic
research on people adopting computers", "grade-school teachers' work
strategies", "new technology in schools", and so on. Take those
pieces to the library and locate the existing literature in each
area. This will feel strange at first: if you've only worked with
ethnographers, then the non-ethnographic work on your topic will seem
foreign; if you've only worked with education people, then the work
of business people or sociologists will seem foreign; and if you've
only worked with people who study teachers' strategies, then the work
on students' strategies will seem foreign. The vocabulary and
research agendas may well be different, and it may take some effort
to figure out what constitutes good research in a different
literature. But find the relevant literature anyway, photocopy it,
read it, get your head around its issues and worldview, highlight
salient passages, take notes, write full citations in your notebook,
and look particularly for the authors whose work you respect and
whose values you share.

If this seems like a lot of work, think of it as shopping: the
library is a giant department store, and you are shopping for
professional colleagues. Accumulate a "long list" of potential
colleagues. Study their work and learn from it. Figure out what
pieces your work has in common with theirs. Then practice explaining
your research in a way that puts those pieces in the foreground and
the other pieces in the background. The general formula is "I'm
interested in [elements you have in common with the person you're
talking to], and to this end I'm studying [elements that you don't
have in common with them]". For example, "I'm interested in how
teachers adopt computers, and to this end I'm conducting an
ethnographic study of some grade-school teachers' strategies for
including computers in their lessons", or "I'm doing ethnographic
research on people adopting computers, and my fieldwork concerns
grade-school teachers ...". Now you are ready to build a community
for yourself that includes relevant people from several different
research areas. These people will be like spokes in a wheel, of which
you are the hub.

I am taking a strong stand here about the nature of networking, and
so let me explain the point another way. Many students ask
themselves, "which network should I join?", and they worry that they
will make the wrong choice. After all, your social network defines
your career in a profound way, and if you choose an unfriendly
network then you can make your life miserable. But this is the wrong
way to think about it. You are not choosing which network to join;
rather, you are creating a new network of your own. Your network is
made out of individuals -- the individuals whose research and outlook
are related to your own. These individuals' own networks will overlap
to some extent, but they will not be identical. Most of them will
attend several different conferences, publish in several different
journals, and so on. You should do the same. Don't spread yourself
too thin by trying to cultivate everyone who could possibly be
relevant. But don't confine yourself to existing boundaries either.


(3) Court these people individually.

The right way to do this is not entirely obvious. Unless you are
already well known in the person's field, you should NOT simply
approach them and say, "hey, I hear you're interested in ...". The
reason for this is profound, viz, whereas ordinary social life calls
on you to simply be yourself, professional life calls on you to
construct and maintain a complex professional persona that is
composed largely of your research, writing, and professional
activities.

Therefore, in approaching possible professional contacts, you should
let your research articles be your emissaries. (If you haven't
written anything yet, let your networking wait until you have.
Unpublished articles, conference papers, and research reports are all
okay. In writing your first articles, you will want to lean heavily
on your local system of advisors, mentors, and peers; the skills
involved in this process are a subject for another time.)

Here is the procedure: (a) choose someone you wish to approach and
read their work with some care; (b) make sure that your article cites
their work in some substantial way (in addition to all your other
citations); (c) mail the person a copy of your article; and (d)
include a low-key, one-page cover letter that says something
intelligent about their work. If your work and theirs could be seen
to overlap, include a concise statement of the relationship you see
between them. The tone of this letter counts. Project ordinary, calm
self-confidence. Refrain from praising or fawning or self-deprecation
or cuteness or making a big deal out of it -- you're not
subordinating yourself to this person; you're just passing along your
paper. Don't sound like you're presupposing or demanding that you'll
get a response. Try a formula such as, "If you should happen to have
any comments, I would be most interested to hear them". A good final
sentiment for your letter is, "Will you be at such-and-such
conference?".

Don't drop dead if you don't get a response right away. Anybody who
isn't egotistical will appreciate your taking the trouble to write
them. Most people are thrilled to learn that someone understands what
they're saying. If they don't reply, that's regrettable but it just
means they're busy. The deep principle is that network-building takes
time. It's a long-term investment. You have to get your name out
there. Keep taking the actions that I am describing, and trust that
your community will come together when it needs to. The lack of an
immediate response does not mean that nothing was accomplished, and
you should not read any meaning into it.

In some countries, custom places great emphasis on "being introduced"
to someone. That is, if you wish to meet with person X, you must
first convince a professional peer of X, let us say Y, to formally
introduce you at some professional gathering, or at least write you
some kind of letter of introduction. While this procedure is harmless
enough in itself as a substitute for the kind of letter I described
above (provided that you have written a relevant paper along the
lines I also described above), I think it is most unfortunate when
customs actually *require* introductions. The effect is to reproduce
social inequalities by making it difficult for anybody new to break
into the existing circle of professional contacts. The procedure I
advocate may sound embarrassingly American, but it is also relatively
egalitarian.

A few comments about the paper itself.

Make sure you include full contact information on the front page.
That includes your mailing address, phone number, e-mail address, and
home page URL. Be sure to mark the paper as a "draft" unless it has
been formally published, and put a date on it to distinguish
different versions.

Write a good abstract. A bad abstract just announces a question
("topic X is important and I will say something about it"), but a
good abstract also answers the question by clearly stating the
substance of your new idea or discovery. You may resist putting the
bottom line of your paper right there in the abstract; it feels like
you're making the paper redundant. But don't worry; it only feels
that way because you know how the conclusion is arrived at.

Do not use citations as a form of flattery. This sort of thing fools
nobody. Instead, think of a research paper as a kind of open letter,
with the people you cite included among its addressees. The research
literature is a conversation, and your paper is a way of starting new
conversations with people in your area. When in doubt, get advice.


(4) Meet this person face-to-face at a professional meeting.

Research people normally go to great lengths to attend conferences
and other professional meetings, and computer networks are unlikely
to change this. So submit papers to conferences. Once you're at a
conference, by all means attend the talks that interest you. But
spend most of your time tracking particular people down and talking
to them. If your target is scheduled to speak, attend the talk and
then introduce yourself as the crowd is breaking up, or in the break
or reception time afterward. The person's talk will provide
conversation topics, and most people are more relaxed after their
talk is over anyway. You shouldn't introduce yourself out of the blue
by saying, "I wrote you a letter, remember?", but you can gently
refresh their memory a moment or two into the discussion. Unless you
really know what you're doing, you should keep the conversation to
safe, professional topics. Ask questions about their work that you
genuinely want answered. Ask them about the people they work with.
Figure out who you know (that is, professionally) in common. Say
things like, "I hear that your school has started a new such-and-such
program; is that something you were involved in?", or "So-and-so from
your group joined our faculty recently; nice person, interesting
work". If other people, projects, or laboratories come up in the
conversation, say whatever positive things you honestly have to say
about them -- avoid criticism and negativity.

The most important project, once the discussion turns to matters of
professional and intellectual substance, is the articulation of
shared values, for example, "we both believe in using research to
change the world", or "we both believe in using both qualitative and
quantitative methods judiciously, without any a priori bias against
either". Shared values make for stronger professional bonds than
shared ideas or shared interests alone. Don't rush into this, but do
keep the conversation focused on the concrete professional topics
that will provide raw materials for it. On the other hand, if the
conversation doesn't seem to be going anywhere, that's not your
fault. Don't force it. Don't set enormous expectations for a single
conversation. It's a long-term process. Just say "nice chatting with
you" in a pleasant way and let it go. If the interaction went well,
you can end the conversation by saying, "do you have a business
card?" in a mildly enthusiastic way (assuming you have one yourself);
if they don't have a card then shrug and let it go. If the
interaction leaves you feeling bad, go get some fresh air,
acknowledge the feelings, and be nice to yourself. Talk it out with
someone if you need to. Then carry on.

If the person you wish to approach is significantly more powerful
than you then the prospect of conversing with him or her will
probably make you uneasy. That's okay. Concentrate on meeting people
who intimidate you less and your courage will grow. Your single most
important audience is actually not the power-holders of your field
anyway, but rather the best people of your own professional cohort,
especially other graduate students and others who are a few years
further along than you. These people share your situation and will
usually be happy to talk to you.

Notwithstanding all of this strategy, you should give respectful
attention to anybody who approaches you, no matter how junior or
marginal they might be. If you find yourself talking to someone who
is aggressive or confused, have compassion. It's up to you which
relationships to pursue in depth, but everyone you meet shapes your
reputation. You should conduct your professional activities ethically
-- and not just within the bounds of a legalistic interpretation of
ethical principles, but with an active and creative solicitude for
the well-being of the individuals and communities around you. You
don't have to be shy or let people walk on you, and there's nothing
wrong with being first in line if you've earned it. But if you get
ahead at the expense of others then it will catch up with you -- in
your heart if not immediately in your paycheck.


(5) Exchange drafts.

Having made initial contacts with people, I'm afraid that the next
step depends on the hierarchy. If someone is much more senior than
you, your goal is simply to get on their radar screen -- one chat per
year is plenty. (That's mostly because they already have a full
network and have begun to reckon relevance differently from you.) If
someone you have met is more or less equal to you in the hierarchy,
and if they still strike you as relevant, worthwhile, and
trustworthy, it will probably be time to exchange pre-publication
drafts of new articles. Again, keep it low-key: pass along a draft
that you're ready to circulate and invite "any comments you might
have". (Make sure you've run your draft through a spelling checker
first.)

Upon receiving such a draft yourself, take the trouble to write out a
set of comments on it. Make sure your comments are intelligent,
thoughtful, constructive, and useful. And legible. Good comments
include "so-and-so's work might be relevant here because ...", "I can
imagine a so-and-so arguing that you're wrong here because ...", "I
didn't understand what you meant by such-and-such; do you mean X, or
Y, or what?", "a possible counterexample here is ...", "another
question that might be interesting to discuss here is ...", "you
could take this analysis even further by talking about ...", "this
point could probably use more explanation because ...", "I found the
transition here to be jarring", "would it be correct to say that
you're arguing that ...?".

If you are uncomfortable writing critical comments, frame them with
positive comments ("this is obviously an important topic and you've
made some valuable observations"), develop a lexicon of hedges ("I'm
not clear on ...", "maybe"), emphasize what's possible instead of
what's wrong ("maybe you can build on this by ...", "perhaps you can
further clarify this by ..."), own your feelings and judgements ("my
sense is that ...", "I had trouble with ...", "I couldn't figure out
whether you meant X or Y", "I'm worried about the assumption that
...", "I think I disagree with this argument because ..."), emphasize
the audience ("I'm concerned that this particular audience will
perceive this as ...", "I think these readers might interpret you as
saying ..."), turn shortcomings into opportunities ("a topic for
future research here might be ..."), and keep to specifics ("how does
this step follow?" as opposed to "woolly and vague"). These
rhetorical devices may seem baroque at first; their purpose is to let
you express yourself honestly without fear of giving offense. Indeed,
once you get used to these devices you may realize that you've spent
your whole professional life saying what you think you're supposed to
say instead of asking yourself what you really think and feel. The
point, of course, is not to use the precise words I'm offering, but
rather to find words that work for you while serving the same general
purpose.

Most of your comments will respond to local issues in the author's
paper. When you get done with these local comments, but while the
issues are still fresh in your mind, it's good to take a step back.
Ask yourself, "what is the really outstanding paper that's in here
trying to get out?". Then explain to the author what this really
outstanding paper is like, without of course implying that the paper
isn't already really outstanding. On a more mundane level, you might
take a moment to think of relevant references that the author hasn't
cited.

When you get someone else's comments on your draft, you should take
them seriously without regarding them as nonnegotiable demands. When
they suggest that you change something, distinguish clearly in your
mind between the problem the commenter was having and the solution
they suggested. If they saw a problem (grammar, logic, fogginess,
etc) then a problem probably does exist and you should probably fix
it in some way. But their particular solution might not be the best
one, and you should not feel bound to adopt it. In fact, the most
common error in using such comments is to follow them superficially,
making the changes that entail the least possible effort, without
honestly asking yourself what the underlying problem (if any) might
be. For example, it will sometimes be clear that the reader
misunderstood something you wrote. Their misconstrual will usually be
offensively absurd, and you may feel frustrated. The solution to this
problem is not to send the commenter a message to set them straight,
but rather to figure out how a reasonable person, operating from a
particular background of assumptions, might misconstrue what you
wrote in that way -- and revise accordingly. When you're revising a
paper based on such comments, try to formulate particular rules or
themes or slogans to define an agenda for improving your writing.
Identifying such an agenda will make you more aware of potential
problems in the future, as well as motivating you to take some action
about them, for example by rereading Strunk and White's "Elements of
Style" or Claire Kehrwald Cook's fabulous and little-known
copyediting book "Line by Line" one more time.

The ritual of meeting people and exchanging drafts is tremendously
important. It's a shame, therefore, that nobody ever seems to teach
you how it's done. When in doubt, ask for help. And if somebody
comments a draft for you, thank them, include them in the paper's
acknowledgements, and be willing to reciprocate. (You don't need to
make an explicit offer of reciprocation, though, any more than you
need to express your willingness to pass the salt -- it's
understood.) Doing so, even once, will almost certainly cement a
long-term professional relationship -- a new member of your network.
What is more, having thoughtfully reflected on others' comments on
your work will help you to internalize their voices. That way, their
voices will keep on talking to you during later projects. You will be
smarter as a result, and you will have a clearer and more realistic
sense of who your audience is and how they will react to your writing.


(6) Follow up.

Keep coming up with simple ways to be useful to the people in your
network. A few times a year is plenty. Pass things along to them.
Mention their work to other people. Plug them in your talks. Include
them in things. Get your department or laboratory to invite them to
speak. Put them up when they come to town. Write reviews of their
books. And invent other helpful things to do. None of this is
mandatory, of course, but it helps. And I can't repeat this often
enough: keep it low-key. Never, ever pressure anybody into anything.
Don't say "please" or "I know you must be very busy", which can sound
like emotional manipulation. Don't heap so much unsolicited help on
someone that they feel crowded or obligated. Don't complain. Don't
approach the whole business as a matter of supplication and begging,
but rather as ordinary cooperation among equals. Likewise, make sure
you're exchanging these favors out of courtesy and respect, and not
as phony politicking -- everyone hates that stuff. Build
relationships with personal friends outside of work so you won't be
unconsciously trying to get professional contacts to play roles in
your personal life (for example, the role of sounding board for your
troubles). If you don't hear from someone for a while, let it ride.
If you feel yourself getting obsessive about the process, go talk it
out with someone you regard as wise.

This step-by-step procedure is obviously oversimplified and rigid.
And it omits many topics, such as the claims that effective
networking makes on numerous other activities: teaching, giving
talks, mixing at receptions, formulating research results, working
with people at your home institution, and so forth. Nonetheless, some
basic points about the networking process should be clear enough:

* It takes time -- you have to be patient and let it happen.

* It focuses on particular individuals and particular relationships.

* It produces bonds of reciprocal obligation through the exchange of favors.

* It calls for a significant but manageable up-front investment.

* It requires you to cultivate a realistic awareness of power.

* It involves a variety of communication media.

* It forces you to develop communication skills in each of these media.

None of this is etched in stone. You should keep reflecting on your
professional life as you go along, continually trying to come up with
a better way of explaining it to yourself. No doubt I've left out
some important dimensions of the process. When you figure them out,
please let me know.


4 Electronic Media: Some Cautions

Having surveyed the basics of networking and professional
relationships, it's time to consider the role that electronic
communication can play. The most important thing is to employ
electronic media consciously and deliberately as part of a larger
strategy for your career. It's okay to use the net in other parts of
your life: hunting for people to correspond with, organizing
political movements, joining discussions about sex and child-rearing,
and so forth. But so long as you have your professional hat on, every
message you exchange on the network should be part of the process of
finding, building, and maintaining professional relationships. I
cannot emphasize this strongly enough, because electronic mail seems
to provide endless temptations to the contrary. I succumb to these
temptations all the time, and I always regret it. They include:


The temptation to react.

Most on-line discussion groups consist largely of people reacting to
things they've seen, acting on impulse without thinking through their
own agenda in the situation. (One kind of reacting is called
"flaming", but many other kinds of reacting are equally insidious.)
E-mail encourages this kind of reactive behavior by making it easy to
respond to a discussion with only a few rapid keystrokes. Keep your
cool. The more impulsive you are, the more you're using the network
to find friends as opposed to colleagues, and the greater your unmet
needs for affirmation and attention, the more you will be led into
reaction. One slip-up will not bring your career to a halt, but you
should definitely be aware of the phenomenon.

If someone abuses you in an e-mail discussion, hang back. Unless
you're really sure that you've gotten the anger out of your system,
go sleep on it overnight. Talk it out with someone. Decide whether
you should respond at all. If you do respond, go ahead and reveal
your anger ("I felt angry when I read your message"), but then take
care to paraphrase your interpretation ("I took you to be accusing me
of trampling on your area of expertise"), admit the (usually very
real) possibility of misinterpretation ("Perhaps I wasn't clear, or
perhaps I've misinterpreted your response"), outline the facts as you
see them ("My understanding is that ..."), and politely invite a
response ("I'd greatly appreciate hearing your perspective. Thank
you."). Part of you may be howling for revenge the whole time you're
typing this stuff, and the howling will be all the louder because
you're sitting alone in a room with just a computer terminal to
inhibit you. But definitely resist the howling and you'll be
surprised how often you can rescue a bad situation. Few people in
net-land are really as awful as all that.


The temptation to treat people like machines.

One seeming consequence of the intangibility of e-mail is that basic
politeness often erodes. I find it takes real work to remind myself
that the person behind the e-mail message is an actual human being
and not, say, another name to add to my network. You can help keep
network interactions on a human level by taking special care about
the basics of politeness. If you send someone a message, address them
by name. And if somebody on the net helps you out (for example by
providing some information in response to a query on a discussion
group), say "Thank you" and perhaps give a brief account of how their
help was helpful. If their message to you was detailed, for example,
point out that you noticed this by saying "Thank you for your
detailed message".

More generally, practice coming up with positive, non-obvious things
to say about people and their actions. It's harder than coming up
with negative things to say, of course, but it makes you much more
perceptive, articulate, and diplomatic. It also helps you to offer
criticism, since people find criticism much more useful when you put
it the context of positive observations. For example, someone I know
once pointed out to me that I always try to make things fun. I had
never realized this before, but it's true, and his incredibly astute
observation really changed my own awareness of myself, as well as
giving me a sense of proportion against which to weigh the equally
astute criticisms that he also had to offer. A positive observation,
by the way, isn't just a compliment. Most compliments are generic
(smart, pretty, nice, responsible, blah blah blah) but positive
observations are much more specific to that individual. They're much
less obvious and much more valuable, and they don't have the same
faintly manipulative feeling as ritual praise.


The temptation to pretense.

Electronic communication affords the illusion of semi-anonymity:
since people only know you by what you type, you may tend to lose the
inhibitions that normally keep you from pronouncing on matters that
you are not really informed about. The chatty informality of most
e-mail discussion groups, which is certainly capable of being a force
for good in the world, nonetheless also tends to wear down these
inhibitions. Besides, everyone else is doing it. But pretending to
know things is just as bad an idea on e-mail as it is face-to-face.
Phrases like "I think I recall that ..." and "I'm not a lawyer but
..." are red flags -- indications that you're probably about to do
more harm than good. Keep focused on your own unique professional
contributions and let the random chatter slide.

Beware: many people revile this injunction against pretense, based on
a false conception of community and a misguided fear of elitism. I am
certainly not promoting the reign of experts here; I am simply
applying to electronic communication the everyday injunction to know
what you're talking about.


The temptation to paranoia.

Along with your own near-anonymity goes the frequent difficulty of
knowing who exactly is receiving your discussion-group messages. As a
result, you may just listen in, terrified to say anything for fear
that you will be dumped on by powerful experts -- an experience
sometimes stigmatized (or even celebrated, as if it expressed some
kind of power) as "lurking". This phenomenon is not exclusive to
e-mail, of course (much hype to the contrary), but it is real. The
solution is to focus on the careful, step-by-step process of
approaching individuals, leaving group participation until you feel
more comfortable -- which you will, eventually. Don't feel pressured
to participate before you are ready.


The temptation to get overwhelmed.

It's easy to sign up for everything that sounds interesting, or to
pursue dozens of people in every direction, only to find yourself
swamped with messages to read and favors to return. If you're getting
more than about twenty messages a day, or if you hear yourself saying
"it's all I can do just to delete all the messages that fill up my
mailbox", then perhaps you should review your goals and adjust your
mailing list subscriptions accordingly. If you're on a high-volume
list, investigate whether it has a "digest" option that packages the
messages for each day or week into one big message.


The temptation to get addicted.

Addiction means getting overwhelmed on purpose. Few people take
e-mail addiction seriously, but it is a genuine addiction and it can
be a self-destructive waste of time. Ask yourself: Can I just decide
to give it a rest for a few days? Am I reading all this e-mail
because I get some identifiable value out of it, or am I doing it to
distract myself from my feelings? Do I use other things to distract
myself from my feelings -- drugs, sex, food, alcohol, television,
work? If you start thinking that any of the answers to these
questions might be "yes", go find a twelve-step recovery group in
your community (Alcoholics Anonymous or the many other programs that
have been modeled on it) -- or maybe start one on the net.

Getting help doesn't mean you're crazy; quite the contrary, it means
you're one of the saner people around. And taking care of yourself
doesn't make you selfish; quite the contrary, it is a prerequisite to
being any genuine use to anyone else.


The temptation to waste time.

Exploring the net is a tremendous way to avoid writing your thesis.
But random exploration will rarely yield network information
resources that are actually useful to your real career goals. Useful
information is always bound up with useful people. Therefore, your
explorations of the network will most usefully be guided by your
goals and structured by the search for people to add to your network.

If you really do care about on-line information resources, develop a
good relationship with a librarian. Librarians are almost uniformly
wonderful people who enjoy helping you find things, whether on the
net or elsewhere. (If you're shy about asking people to do things for
you, instead tell them what you're trying to accomplish and ask them
for advice about how to do it yourself and for suggestions about who
might be able to help you.)


The temptation to blame e-mail for your problems.

If you're a beginner with electronic communication, you will probably
have a few mishaps at some point: getting put down by somebody,
acting on an impulse that you later regret, accidentally sending a
message to the wrong person, violating the obscure protocols of
professional communication, getting overwhelmed with marginally
worthwhile messages, finding yourself trapped in long, complicated
correspondences, or whatever. When this happens, you might be moved
to blame the medium; you'll find yourself saying that e-mail is
dangerous or worthless or overwhelming. But ask yourself: do similar
things happen in group meetings or conferences or over the telephone
or in paper mail? E-mail has its shortcomings to be sure, but it's
just a tool like any other. You'll have to learn how to use it, what
to use it for, and when not to use it.

Of course, a few mistakes won't kill you. And it's just as bad to go
to the opposite extreme and become a compulsive machine for scoring
points and making connections. What matters is understanding whatever
you're doing within the bigger picture of your life and career.


5 The Role of E-Mail

So, assuming you've been duly admonished against these temptations,
what *are* the most constructive uses of electronic communication?
Let's review the six-step networking process I outlined above and
look for opportunities to use electronic mail to ease the various
steps:


(1) Know your goals.

Electronic mail can't help you much here. Indeed, you'll need to make
sure that your goals are not defined narrowly in terms of electronic
mail. Once you've begun corresponding with people you consider wise,
you can begin to seek advice from them. Asking for advice is an art
in itself, and other things being equal it's best done face-to-face,
but once you know someone fairly well on a face-to-face basis you can
move some of the discussion to e-mail.


(2) Identify some relevant people.

The most fundamental way of finding people online is to help them
find you. This starts with your home page. Your home page is a
projection of your professional persona -- a way for people to know
who you are as a member of the profession. If you have had a past
life in a professional field, then you instinctively understand the
point: your fate depends on how people perceive you, and so it
matters what image of yourself you project. Your home page should
include four things:

* complete contact information (paper mail and e-mail addresses, work
phone and fax numbers, that sort of thing),

* links to organizations you are associated with (your department,
laboratory, project, professional associations, events that you are
involved in organizing, classes you teach, etc),

* full citations to all of the publications you want people to know
about (these should ideally be linked to complete text for all of
those publications), and

* links to other Web-based facilities that you maintain, for example
a page of links to resources that are relevant to your research topic.

It is especially important to put your publications on your Web site.
This can be difficult, given that publishers generally ask you to
sign over your copyrights. But even when this happens, you can still
amend the copyright form with a marginal phrase like "I retain the
right to post the paper on my Web site". The publisher may grouch at
you or say no, but it's worth a try -- vastly more people will read
your work online than in the dusty pages of a journal. The best
situation is when you publish in a journal (or conference
proceedings) that is itself online. In that case you can link from
your home page to the official version of the publication, and the
official version of the publication can include a link back to your
home page. In general, the more you spread around links to your home
page, e.g., by always including it in your bio when you write
magazine articles and the like, and by including it in all of your
messages to discussion groups and the like, the more it will help you
to connect with others.

Unless you know what you're doing, I do not recommend including
personal information on your professional Web page. If you do want to
maintain a personal home page for your friends and family, or if you
want to post your baby pictures and jokes and links to TV show fan
pages, get an ISP account and create a completely separate home page
for that purpose. I also do not recommend putting goofy stuff on your
professional home page. It needn't be dour and pompous, but it should
not be frivolous either. Humor is okay, but professional humor. It's
a fine line.

Having made yourself visible on the Web, you can also use the Web to
search for people whose work is relevant to your own. Web searching
certainly does not replace library work. But the library and Web sort
the world in very different ways, and you can accomplish a great deal
by moving back and forth between them. Look for specialized online
resources that are specific to your field, directories of research
project in your field that people might have built on the Web, and
the home pages of relevant university departments and other research
institutions. Hunt through them, and notice how badly designed most
people's home pages are for your purposes. When you do find useful
materials, such as online research papers, be sure to capture URL's
and citations for future reference. You might even consider creating
your own Web page with links to those resources, thus saving both
yourself and other people the trouble of searching for them again.

You can also use online discussion groups to find people, but you
should do so cautiously. If someone in a discussion impresses you,
don't approach them right away. (It's obviously okay to answer
routine functional requests on the order of, "does anyone know ...?",
provided you simply answer the request and leave the networking for
later.) Instead, head back to the library catalog and periodical
indexes (which are probably on-line anyway), look the person up, read
a sample of what they've written (especially any books they might
have published -- at least skim them), and proceed with the next
step. Then use standard Web search tools to locate this person's home
page, which might include some citations or even complete papers.
Only if you cannot find any relevant publications should you consider
sending the person a concise note saying, "what you said about XXX is
interesting to me because of YYY; if you have an article on the
subject ready to distribute then I'd much appreciate a copy".

Or, having listened in on a discussion group for a while and observed
its customs and conventions, you might consider contributing
something yourself. Don't just react or chat. Instead, write a really
intelligent, self-respecting, unshowy, low-key, less-than-one-page
message that makes a single, clearly stated point about a topic
that's relevant to both their interests and your own, preferably but
not necessarily as a contribution to an ongoing discussion. Since
your message might be read by people all over the world, avoid any
slang or jokes which might not travel well. Sit on this message
overnight to make sure you're not just reacting to something or
repeating a familiar point that happens to make people in your
community feel good. If you're feeling uneasy or compulsive about it
then just throw it out and wait for another day, or get comments from
someone whose judgement you trust.

Having thus refined your message, contribute it to the discussion
group and see what happens. If nothing happens, don't be too
concerned. Part of having a public voice is that your audience isn't
always directly visible; you won't always get the same kind of
immediate feedback that you get in a one-to-one, face-to-face
interaction. So resist the urge to agitate until you get a visible
response. If your message happens to start a discussion then listen
respectfully, constructively acknowledge all halfway worthwhile
responses, and be sure you're not just reacting to things. This
process might flush out some people worth adding to your network. Or
it might not. In any case it will get your name out and will, with
remarkable efficiency, establish your reputation as an intelligent
and thoughtful person. Remember: don't bother doing any of this until
you've written up some work and are ready to actually start building
your network.

One thing that does not work, in my experience, is broadcasting a
message to half the world saying, "I'm looking for people who are
working on such-and-such", or "I've written papers about X and anyone
would be welcome to read them". I don't know why exactly, but such
broadcasts either don't reach the most worthwhile people, or the most
worthwhile people are too busy to answer them. Whenever possible,
then, approach people as individuals. What you *can* do is to send
messages individually to small numbers of people saying, "Can I ask
your help? I'm trying to locate people who are working on
such-and-such. I've tried the obvious sources in journals and
indexes, but without much luck. Any leads you can offer would be much
appreciated." Only do this if you have a specific purpose in mind for
finding such people, such as organizing a workshop or other
professional activity.


(3) Court these people individually.

In the old days, the article and letter you sent to approach someone
were both printed on paper. Should you use electronic mail instead? I
actually recommend using paper. At least you shouldn't use electronic
media just because they're modern. For one thing, paper is much
easier to flip through quickly or to read on the subway. It's also
much easier to write comments on. Use your judgement. If you do
decide to employ electronic mail for this purpose, use just as much
care as you would on paper. Remember that first impressions count.
And don't try to use e-mail for the get-to-know-you type of chatting
that should logically follow at this point. Instead ...


(4) Meet this person face-to-face.

I believe, notwithstanding all the talk about "virtual reality" and
"electronic communities", that electronic communication does not make
face-to-face interaction obsolete. Instead, as I said at the outset,
you should think of e-mail and face-to-face interaction as part of a
larger ecology of communication media, each with its own role to
play. In particular, I honestly believe that you do not really have a
professional relationship with someone until you have spoken with
them face-to-face at length, preferably in a relaxed setting over a
social beverage. Call me old-fashioned, but make sure that any
aversion you might have to face-to-face interaction isn't based on
inertia or fear. Inertia and fear are normal feelings, but they have
to be worked through and faced.

Having said that, the availability of e-mail will nonetheless bring
subtle changes to the ecology of communication in your field. This is
particularly true with regard to the telephone, whose uses change
considerably in e-mail-intensive communities -- so much so, in fact,
that many people nearly stop using the phone altogether (or never
learn how) and try to use e-mail for unsuitable purposes like asking
discussion groups for information that could have been gotten more
easily through resources listed in the front of the phone book. (It's
amazing what you can accomplish over the telephone once you learn
how. And long-distance really is not that expensive unless you're
planning to settle in for a long chat, which you usually are not.)
But the role of face-to-face interaction will change as well,
particularly since many kinds of routine work can be conducted almost
as easily at a distance electronically as in formal meetings
face-to-face. Electronic communication might even allow face-to-face
interaction to shift its balance from its practical to its ritual
functions. In any case, the general lesson is to pay attention to the
relationships among media so you can use the right tool for each job.

One more note: when you go to a professional meeting, take a minute
to flip through your e-mail correspondence and make a list (ideally
on paper) of all the people you've "met" on-line who might attend the
conference. Right before the meeting begins, recite all of the names
out loud to yourself so they'll be on the tip of your tongue. Few
things are more embarrassing than drawing a blank when someone at a
conference approaches you and tries to pick up a conversation begun
on e-mail.


(5) Exchange drafts.

Once again, you should decide whether to use paper or electronic mail
to exchange comments on drafts of articles. I recommend using
electronic mail. Read the paper once with a red pen, marking small
items and writing two-word marginal comments -- just enough to remind
you of your thoughts an hour later. Having marked the superficial
problems, you may need to read the draft again with more weighty
questions in mind. Again, simple comments in the margin will suffice.
Then, right away, before your thoughts fade, sit down at a computer
and type in a long e-mail message with all of the thoughts that your
two-word comments call back to mind. Just keep typing until you run
out of red markings to explicate. You will be amazed at how much
useful material you can generate in a short time. Once you are
finished, toss the author's draft in the recycling bin. The author
will miss out on some of your detailed copyediting, but you don't
want to take the risk that the author will misunderstand the cryptic
comments you wrote in the margin. If you do decide to paper-mail the
marked-up draft to the author, put your name and phone number on it
so they can keep track of whose comments were whose.

Notice the complex interactions between paper and electronic forms of
communication. You may find different practices more convenient; the
point is to be aware that you have a choice. I even know people who
tape-record their comments on a paper while they're reading it and
then send the author the tape. Keep your real goals in mind and be
creative.


(6) Follow up.

This is one area where e-mail makes a qualitative difference. Once
you've established a professional relationship with someone, e-mail
provides a convenient way to maintain a steady, low-key background of
useful two-way interactions. You might wish to forward things to
people (abstracts, interesting messages, conference announcements,
press releases, book reviews, whatever) depending on their interests.
Or you might wish to recommend their papers (in a low-key way, with a
concise summary and a complete citation, and only if you really mean
it) to e-mail discussion groups. Don't overdo it, and pay attention
to whether the gesture is being reciprocated.

After a (long) while you might consider building an electronic
mailing list of people who share your interests and would like to get
interesting stuff forwarded to them routinely -- including, of
course, your own abstracts and shorter papers. Never add anybody to
such a list (or any list) without asking them, and never pressure
them or make a big deal out of it. (And make it a real mailing list,
run on an automatic server that lets people subscribe and unsubscribe
automatically, rather than a long list of addresses that you send a
message to. If you do have to send mail to a large number of people
at once, be sure to put their addresses in a Bcc: field, not in the
To: field where everyone will have to look at them.)

E-mail is also obviously useful for a wide variety of other purposes,
for example scheduling and organizing professional events. Make sure
that some purpose is actually being served; don't engage in
professional e-mail correspondence simply for the sake of it.

And don't do any of this stuff with someone unless you've gone
through the previous five steps and established a real, functioning
relationship with them. Finally, double-check that you're keeping
track of the difference between a professional relationship and a
personal relationship. A good test is, would I call this person up on
a Friday night and suggest going to a movie? Even then, give any such
transition in the relationship a little time to sink in before you
start to rely on it.



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