My youngest son, Will, is on a new soccer team. The team’s first game won’t be played until late August; but parents and players began networking with each other and the coach in June to size up who’s going to do what and who will play where.

The same thing happened this past April in Atlanta at the American Association of Airport Executives conference. Consultants and suppliers met with airport folks to determine who needs what and who will “play” where. I guess that’s why conferences can be so vibrant: the opportunities to network are incredibly valuable.

Just like soccer moms and dads mingling on the sidelines, airport executives and their suppliers feel a need to network. Exchanging information helps our decision-making process.  Fortunately, there are an ever-growing number of tools at our disposal.  Some are very broad, like Facebook and Google. Others are more targeted. After filling a valuable niche in the targeted category for years, Airport Improvement is expanding into the broad category as well.

We’ve added a new feature to our website, www.AirportImprovement.com, that allows you to extend your reach beyond our industry-specific forum without leaving the page you’re on! Simply highlight any word, phrase or name, and a tag with “learn more” will appear. When you click on the tag, the power of Google and Bing will bring you more information, images and videos about the topic you highlighted.

Enjoy your new networking tool.

Happy Clicking,

Paul