Where are all my friends?

The hardest thing for the "lifer" who hasn't got much of a life outside of the office is to build a social network.
Most of the people I used to see every day were at IBM. I had friends outside of work but typically saw them only a few times a year.  I didn't have a daily or weekly social circle outside of the office, other than my immediate family.

When we got notice of the resource action, a month before the fact, I did make sure to identify my colleagues who were similarly affected.  We met for lunch and kept in touch by email and occasional one-on-one meetings.
I had started to build up my LinkedIn network a few years ago, in part to keep track of people who left the company before I did.  Even so it was six months after the layoff before I started seriously to build my network.
My LinkedIn contact list has now doubled in the last six months and is close the the magic "500+" level.  LinkedIn is where I keep track of the people I meet, but's not how I meet people.

Last year I talked to a neighbor who had gone through the layoff process.  Her advice was simple: find a local professional networking group and volunteer.  I didn't know how to do that right away.  I started with local networking events like Mass Innovation Nights and OpenCoffee where I could at least meet people (and where I felt more or less at home).  I found these events on Meetup.com, which is an excellent local resource for such groups.  Neither of these groups had the kind of structure that I needed in order to become a more active member.

Boston SPIN turned out to be a much better choice for me for a number of reasons.  The topic of the group is Software Process Improvement and that is central to my area of expertise.  Mass Innovation and OpenCoffee have a much broader audience and are oriented toward the entrepreneur.  Boston SPIN also offered me an audience by asking me to facilitate a round table discussion on the search for work.