Creating an adaptive cafe of contacts

A virtual cafe simply a list of currently active personal contacts. It will contain people who have become established as confidants, friends, cooperators and collaborators; people who provide reliable information, specialist help or services. It will contain useful contacts who know other useful contacts in many different areas of knowledge and experience. It will contain people who can provide funding, legal help or accountancy services. Most importantly, it will contain people with problems – problems where the solutions might lead to the discovery of profitable business opportunities.

In effect, the virtual cafe is a personal interface to the world at large, a collection of people who would be likely to assist the cafe owner to survive and prosper in a competitive world of high technology and massive connectivity. Such a virtual cafe is illustrated in figure 8.1