But you stopped listening with the words “create a profile”. You’re Linked-In, you tweet until your throat’s dry and you’re fully Facebooked. What’s the point of joining another social network?

Here are some ways that we reckon Intersect is unique:

• We all live in Aotearoa New Zealand, or have a strong connection with this land.
• We’re a diverse network, but we share a similar kaupapa. There’s something about the words “purposeful young professionals” that unite us.
• We find our specific touchstones within this diversity. We can join groups or follow discussions around shared interests.
• We’re locally connected. People join regional groups to stay up to date with local events, ideas and opportunities.
• We meet face to face as well as online. There are regular events in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland, and could easily start in other places. There are resources on the wiki to help members host events.
• While many online social networks focus on connecting with people you already know, Intersect often plays a powerful role in connecting new and awesome people and networks.
• There’s a strong focus on learning, sharing, collaborating, supporting and doing. We’re not here to witticise within 140 characters, share photos of our holiday, talk about our most detested music video, or describe every job we’ve had in high-fluting language. We’ve never spotted a cute kitten on the site. There are other spaces for that. But we do make connections which lead to friendships, job opportunities and connections in other social network spaces.

The Intersect Trust and Network bring diverse people together to produce new and surprising solutions in our work and the rest of our lives. We collaborate around the issues that purposeful young professionals care about.

Intersecting involves:

• creating powerful connections among people
• multidisciplinary networking
• enabling great ideas
• sharing actions and energy
• personal and professional development
• generating and spreading new thinking and solutions
• enjoying life and work.

A purposeful young professional helps life thrive in their ongoing search for meaningful work. We’re old enough to be highly skilled, but young enough to be active learners. We’re well-connected and clear about our values. We care deeply for our world. We define our own purpose, but we’re strongly driven to have a positive social / environmental impact.

Here’s what we mean by these words:

Purposeful: Having a clear intent to create positive impacts.

Professional: Someone who is highly competent in their work, full of integrity, and keeps developing their capabilities.

Young Professional: People in the early part of their working life (mostly aged 20-35 years). If you’re older than this but young at heart, you’ll still very welcome to join the Intersect Network! You’re also welcome to join if you’re still studying/learning a new profession.

Work: Includes paid/unpaid work, because we can’t always get paid to do the work we love.

This description will change!

Intersect members can define what they mean by purposeful young professionals for themselves. You can check out the latest group definition on Intersect’s Wiki.

• The Intersect Trust is a registered NZ charity (find out more info here). The Trust attracts resources for purposeful young professionals. We do this through sponsorship, contributions from members and social business ventures.
• The Trust then invest resources into the Network. For example, we provide tools for collaboration such as the on-line Network and Wiki. We support people to host local Intersect events. We’ve created scholarships for people at conferences, led an art competition and more. We also add heaps of enthusiasm to foster a creative, solutions-oriented culture.
• The Trust employs a coordinator to keep everyone in the Network connected by noticing “hot spots” in the Network and sharing these with members via our Newsletter and Twitter.
• The Network is self-organising: the Trustees often give it attention, but it flows and grows through the interactions of all its members.
• Members of the Network get involved in anything that interests or excites them. Many members are happy to just stay connected and let others take the lead.
• Very active members are known as Activators. They ignite activity in the Network by sharing their time, energy and skills. Any Intersect member can be an Activator (you can find out more here).
• People naturally start to form groups of common interest in the Network, thanks to the involvement of Activators. When a group attracts lots of enthusiasm and attention it often erupts. There are over 80 groups in the Network, covering many different hot spots.
• Although lots of intersecting happens on-line, nothing beats meeting face to face. That’s why there are also regional groups that host local events. Intersect members can share resources to make these events energising and inspiring.
• The Trust also gives extra support to some groups or organisations that closely align with the charitable purposes of the Trust. These are called Intersect Hosted Groups. We provide administrative assistance and extra special attention to help them thrive. Frocks on Bikes is the only group that we’re currently hosting in this way, but we hope to involve more groups in the future.

So in a nutshell… the Trust doesn’t do things “for” members. We aim to create the ideal conditions for members to purposefully create a better world themselves.