A great joy of working with different clients is getting to hear all their creative ideas. While some come with just a list of features, others bring great ideas about how they want to communicate with their clients and simultaneously empower their clients to communicate with each other. Listening to those folks is inspiring.

They may not be experienced with social media or have complete confidence in their ability to handle the unknowns once people arrive. But because they have a detailed sense of how they want to help, and a good feel for the pent up why their customers want to talk with one another, they're (seriously) half-way there. It's the vision thing...and when people have that, it's a pure pleasure to get to help make it happen.

I talked with some prospective clients this week who can project their idea out several years. They have numerous segments of their constituencies who can be brought together for mutual benefit, and they know where they want to start.

What they don't have is experience with planning and managing the interaction strategy -- the specifics of how people will get and give attention, make friends, and express themselves. But like anyone who believes in connection and community, they know the power of the resulting whole can be much bigger than the sum of its individual interactions. They're in for the long term and ready for commitment. Hope we get to work with them!