This evening I shall be writing to a bunch of people I know, indevidual emails for indevidual people who I think might enjoy twinning their company with others doing something simalar. This is what an evening of reading Inc Magazine will do for you.
Before I do however I should probably explain a little better how I imagine this is going to work. It was all based around the following ideas:
Towns twin which each other. For example it would appear that my fairy home toon Newcastle Upon Tyne is twinned with Atlanta , Bergen, Gelsenkirchen, and numerous others. I’m not totally convinced I know what the benefit of twinning with thee places, but I’m just some councilers get to go an a few jollies and probably some other fringe benefits. These is however very little love and Wuffie generated however. I suspect not a huge number of people are involved. Certinly thereis no council run scheme I know of encouraging me to visit Altanta.
Schools twin with each other, and this seems to be a much more productive arrangement. They get to go on exchanges, see how other people live, learn a bit of a new language and hopefully improve their understanding of each tohers cultures. It’s far more difficult to go to war with people you have a personal connection with. Over all the result is much more productive for all involved.
Finally, people get twinned. I speak of the notion of penfriends, rather than arrnaged marrages. Several people I know maintain written relationships with people around the world, mostly buy email these days I imagine, with people they met through penfriend services. Much love and Wuffie is generated, and in some cases more tangable assets. My old office mate John for example met his Polish wife through such a service, and now lives and works out there. I hope he takes a little bit of Yorkshire out with him, and I maintain the hope that he will bring me back some desent Polish vodka and sausage next time he is back.
Twinning it would appear has the most beneficial outputs the closer it gets to people, and so whilst I’m hoping to start a revolution of twinning companies together, it’s because the people in those companies will benefit. I believe the most successful twinnings will be because a person in each company champions the cause, not just takes along for the tax-deductable ressearch trip to meet their twinned mates.
So I’m setting out to find those people. I’m going to take my best stab at reaching out to passionate people I know who will help me forge links between companies, get them chatting over Skype, sending each other Christmas cards, helping them out if possible, making these relationships work.
My big problem is, I mostly know people working in the UK, and mostly working for massive companies. Something tells me that this whole thing might work best when smallish companies get together. It’s one thing for MegaCorp(tm) to say they are twinned with SuperNet(tm) but it’s quite another when two companies of 15 people twin. It’s not a corporate venture, it is two bunches of people meeting.
So - if you work for a small to medium sized company and this idea facinated you, get in touch (oliver {at} twinnedcompanies.info) and let me know. I’m off to write emails to a bunch of people I know who I thing will love this idea.