The inspiration behind the creation of the offer and the Corporate Alumni Network, was the successful efforts that Mayfield recognized in Steve Tennant and a group of former PeopleSoft employees who created the PeoplSoft Alumni Network. Referred to by Valley insiders as the "PAN", it continues to function as a community of 3,000+ members; primarily former employees, and a large number of recruiters and hiring managers. The PAN was originally organized as a grass-roots effort to help those hit by massive lay-offs at PeopleSoft after their acquisition by Oracle, announced officially just over 4 years ago today.

Organizers of the original PAN community used SocialText to share job information, get organized and collaborate on various tasks like putting together events, sharing job leads, resume coaching. They also discovered that the network fostered sharing of new business opportunities for the company and alumni and an opportunity to document corporate history.

Mayfield recognized the power of the network effect as he participated in the development of the PAN. It ended up being a notion that stuck with him. Another key was that resources emerged from the group, especially a set of best-practices for organizing the efforts and activities on the network. Those developments contribute to the development of "productized" starter-resources which comprise the Corporate Alumni Network. The firm also recently released SocialText v3.0, delivering UI improvements that incorporate activity streaming for managing attention dashboards, people directories with extensions found in Web 2.0 messaging services, and improvements on its all-around collaboration capabilities.

Stay tuned for further posts on this very timely subject; we're looking forward to speaking to Steve Tennant in the near future about his experience organizing the PAN's. We also hope to examine the lessons learned and best practices he's helping to bring to the table for the SocialText Corporate Alumni Network.