Spice of Life HELLO my name is ted nec Con ell W Edited by Lucy Moore W ant to extend your business deeper into a community, save money, and open the door to indirect networking opportunities? Then consider Scott Heiferman’s revelation. Heiferman wanted to tap into the power of self-organized community groups by developing a Web site that connects people online and links them up in real life. Here’s what happened: during September 11, Heiferman was living in New York City. He noticed after the terrorist attack that the city had a “unique sense of community. It felt like a city of neighbors instead of strangers,” said Heiferman in a YouTube video. “As a person who never really gave much thought about that, I became intrigued by it.” His fascination prompted him to pick up Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, an advanced thesis-turned-book that avowed people were no longer connecting with their neighborhood. “Putnam writes about the decline of community in America and about how decades ago people had meetings. In those meetings people came together and helped them out. That whole phenomenon has gone down in the decades since. Putnam challenges us all to take the idea of how can we take the whole idea and bring it to the 21st century,” Heiferman said.