startupi

Networking: making contact with people with a focus on business relations. Netweaving: making connections online with people, continually. With this in mind, a Brazilian team has been doing what they call a road trip on the web to open doors to cooperation between entrepreneurs.

Recently, a Brazilian arrived in Silicon Valley, in the US, with the mission to promote interaction between startups there and  here, supporting the theme of Social Media Week, which has São Paulo and San Francisco as participating cities.

The first road trip had sustainability as a theme

The first road trip on the web undertaken by the team took place in December 2009 in Copenhagen, during the UN climate change debates. The team was supported by Peabirus/TeiaMG/RedeCIM. Antonio Carlos Amorim was the member of the team who went, bringing questions from the Brazilians and sending stories and examples back.

Basically, the trips consist of a person who is traveling remaining in touch with networks of contacts via social media: twitter, blogs, online communities - often via profiles designed for the project; the goal being to put people in touch around content about innovation and entrepreneurship. In the case of Copenhagen, the team used an app to collaboratively map “people, businesses and institutions which are “netweaving for a better planet” (that was the slogan of that trip).

“Netweaving is focused on people, not technology. Netweavers are those who make connections on the web through continued actions, by maintaining a current, renewing their actions on the web to maintain connections that don’t break,” explained Juliana Lima, the netweaver who just arrived for a ten day visit in Silicon Valley.

Now it’s time to activate connections between Brazilian and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs

“Social media today has created a space for netweavers to weave their connections in a collaborative way on many topics. A blog, a social network, a tweet, an activity, and application - all of these are part of weaving, ways of maintaining continual connections with your audience,” clarifies Juliana.

The scheduled visits on her trip include Facebook, PJ & O’Dell, Google, Ning, Zynga, Twitter, City Sourced, Stanford University, and the San Francisco Social Media Week team. During the trip Juliana will post updates on the blog Netweaving on the Road and follow comments from her fellow Brazilians that are posted on the Map of Innovation.