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Yesterday I met this cool guy named Bijoy. He was an immediately obviously intelligent, well-spoken, and interesting person. I liked him right away. Pretty early into the brief conversation, though, he told me that I was the type of person who could never be happy having a boss. Not too much later he told me that I was an evangelist. Huh? He meant that I was one of three types of people, as he has defined in his book The Human Fabric. These three types are Mavens, Relaters, and Evangelists. When asked what how these types were defined I was told that mavens are all about knowledge, Relaters are all about relationships, and Evangelists are action driven. I told him that I’d like to think I was a bit of all three and he gave me a knowing wink and simply said, “everyone does.” Now, I don’t know about you, but I have an inherent difficulty with those that think they can classify me as any “type” of person – especially upon first meeting me. I am a deeply reflective person and I feel that I am the one best equipped to realize my own nature.

So I felt a bit conflicted – I liked Bijoy and clearly he was quite interesting and charming, yet I didn’t appreciate being immediately classified. I went back to my hotel and did some research on him and found that my confusion only deepened. Clearly there were lots of folks who believe that Bijoy has this gift of “seeing” people quickly and clearly. He had written what appeared to be an interesting book, and he had started a network of entrepreneurs, the Bootstrap Network, that was flourishing here in Austin with splinter groups popping up around the world.

Curious, I went to the Bootstrap Network presentation today. I’m not sure what I thought of it. I liked the idea of entrepreneurs networking together and supporting one another, but much of the language used seemed sort of spiritual and nebulous. Is Bijoy one of these charismatic leader types, or is he sort of a wanna-be guru, or is he just a charming and interesting guy? Is the Bootstrap Network a tool for business-minded self-starters, or is it a whole philosophy of the nature of life?

To confound my confusion, the next presentation I attended, about managing virtual teams, was really, really helpful (notes soon to follow) and presented in a very clear, professional manner. There was absolutely no proprietary vocabulary or foggy notions of “energies mixing.” But then the presenter of the panel disclosed that he himself was part of the Bootstrap Network.

Now, a brief disclaimer: I am a very spiritual person, and I do believe that everything is ultimately spiritual in nature – that in fact that there is nothing in this world that is not inherently “spiritual.” I am not put off by spiritual terminology. However, I do recognize that not everyone thinks the same way that I do, and I think that business organizations, or at least their ambassadors, should use common and recognizable language. I believe that you can be deeply spiritual and have personal spiritual beliefs drive your creations, your conversations, your business ventures, and the way you move in professional circles, while not alienating those who may not think the same as you do, or possibly just don’t know the particular terminology you are using.

So I was leaning heavily towards going to the Bootstrap Network party tonight to see if I could resolve some of my tentative and conflicting feelings about the organization and find out what they are really like. I’m even more likely to go now that I’ve learned that the cool guys from Forty Media that I met yesterday are probably going to go. I feel like it could go either way – I could leave there either weirded out, or totally stoked to start a Berkeley chapter. We’ll see …

This entry was posted on Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 3:35 pm and is filed under Business, Personal, SxSW. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.