Task 3a: My Current Networks

Having recently been reading through and getting to grips with reader three, I have been thinking about my current networks and what I can do to improve them. Whilst considering what networks I already had in place I realised my professional network consists of others that I trained with that have continued a career within the arts, past teachers, previous colleagues and peers working on the same course as I am. I keep in contact with most of my networks via my personal Instagram and Facebook. I am in an 'instant messenger' group with all of my friends that I trained with, and that is how I seem to find out most about the industry as we tend to share information on upcoming auditions, events and other points of interest. I also am 'friends' with many of my previous tutors, many of which I have contacted recently to ask for references or to ask to volunteer in the schools they work in. This is where web 2.0 has worked in a great way for me as without it I would have probably lost contact with some of the most vital people that are now in my professional life. Since starting this course I have also started blogging, and reading others blogs and I now have a professional network of bloggers that are on the same course as I am, whether that be the same module or further down the process. 
I find web 2.0 as a vital tool for networking now within this industry. The search engines are now so intelligent that they can see what I search, and who I follow with similar interests and show me more of what I want to see. I often come across people that I would say are acquaintances within the industry and it allows me to connect with them easily. YouTube suggests to me that I should watch certain videos due to previous searches and this means I am kept up to date with new sources online without even having to spend time searching. 
Ideally, my professional network would be more varied but also more selective. I would like to research more into practitioners that I admire and view more of their work, and maybe 'follow' their pages so their work is more readily and easily available for me to learn from. I would also maybe like to remove people from my professional networks that are negative about the industry, and try to bring others down. It is easy to get drawn into being negative in an industry that is so tough to crack and therefore I like to surround myself with hard-working, ambitious and like minded people to myself. However, removing people that are negatively professional, may involve me removing them as my 'friends' from my personal social media pages.
This leads me to start thinking about ethical concerns within my professional network. As I said earlier, most of my networking is done via my personal social media. I have personal and professional relationships with most of the people and maybe the blurring of the two isn't very healthy. It also means that I only post things on social media that is part of my professional persona, but this isn't really something that concerns me as I am quite a private person anyway and don't post personal things on the internet. 
Having come to the conclusion that all of my professional networking is done via web 2.0, to improve it I would like to expand it to more wide bases. My friends who live in London, go to class regularly and have networked with other professionals, at different stages in their career, and this has offered up opportunities for them that may not have been there otherwise. When I move down to London in a few months, I would like to do this too and expand my network, and meet more people within the industry that are far more experienced than I am that I can learn from. I would also like to start volunteering in schools when I move. Therefore I need to find a way to contact and meet teachers, in order to connect with them and gain the experience I need. Maybe I could go to some teaching conventions to meet with others?