I hope everyone is or has had a wonderful holiday season. It has been two weeks and it is time to get back on the networking bandwagon (although I hope you all took time this holiday season to reconnect with friends and family who make the core of ones network).

Recently Research In Motion has suffered some outages which left many disconnected (at least while away from their computers) for a period. While I am not a BlackBerry user I am a iPhone fan and today after getting my phone replaced (lost wifi functions) I was disconnected for a period as the phone was restoring the gigs and gigs of apps, music and data I maintain on my body at all (well almost all) times.

So this got me thinking about the concept of being connected on several levels. There are many who would argue we are all to connected and that we should take a step back from it all. American musician John Mayer has gone so far as to suggest his fans take a one week digital cleanse in which he and they will email only from their laptop or desktop computers, cell phones can only be used to make calls, no use of Twitter or any other social networking site and no visiting of any entertainment or gossip sites. Sounds like something less then a vacation but is not really totally disconnected. But for a guy with 2,842,657 followers to interact with I can sort of understand the need to take a break.

But is being connected really the issue? If by connected we mean having a healthy, valuable and productive network of contacts then I think few would argue that form of connected is a bad thing.

It seems that in some senses this connectedness is resulting in an increase in the amount of information we have to deal with.

Does being connected to lots of people drive you to be electronically connected to much?

Must you be overly connected via Facebook, Twitter, SMS and Email in order to maintain a healthy and productive connection with your network?

If information overload and excessive non-productive communication is the symptom of a problem, is being to connected (electronically or with lots of people) really the issue or are far to many people willing to toss out the good to get rid of the bad.

So how can we best manage our connectedness so that it enhances our work and personal lives instead of become something that requires a cleansing? Can one master Linkedin, Facebook and even Twitter so that they are not throttle down to uselessness or over used to the point of distraction.

Join us as we discuss how to get the most of being connected without letting your connectedness drag you down.

As always, there is no better way to meet and connect (purely in the good sense of the word) with other executives then over dinner and conversation. $21 in advance via PayPal or $25 at the event gets you a full dinner, drink and the best networking around.