Recently I adopted the word ‘mesh’ from Adopt a Word, in part because I named my business Mesh Strategies.

Adopt a Word is a fundraising campaign that supports the work of I CAN, a UK charity that helps children overcome speech, language and communication difficulties. (The campaign struck viral gold a few months ago when Stephen Fry adopted the word ‘wordy’ and tweeted about it to his flock.)

Now I should really be buying gifts for OTHER people as we approach the holiday season. But I just couldn’t resist. And since my gift supports a great charity, need I feel guilty? Even if I bought an accompanying fridge magnet?

So why do I love the word ‘mesh’? Well, there are a few reasons.

The figurative meanings of the verb ‘mesh’ are, for me, wonderful ways to describe how charities and communities work to bring about social change. According to WordNet Search 3.0, ‘mesh’ can mean:

And in computing, ‘mesh’ is used to describe a network that, among other things, can provide continuous access to wireless internet. A wireless mesh network is also referred to as a ‘mesh cloud’, though lately you seem to just hear about ‘the cloud’. Now I don’t purport to know much about this technology, but I like the idea that it’s a ‘self-healing’ and ‘very reliable’ network, as described here on Wikipedia:

“…each node in the [mesh] network may act as an independent router, regardless of whether it is connected to another network or not. It allows for continuous connections and reconfiguration around broken or blocked paths by ‘hopping’ from node to node until the destination is reached…Mesh networks are self-healing: the network can still operate when one node breaks down or a connection goes bad. As a result, the network may typically be very reliable, as there is often more than one path between a source and a destination in the network.”

This concept can also be a good metaphor for the work of charities and communities. And of course the technology itself has great potential. It’s already being set up in diverse municipal areas such as Calgary, Swindon and Guadalajara, and in the future it might be used in disaster zones (Hackers create tools for disaster relief).

I called my freelance business Mesh Strategies because I help nonprofits develop digital programmes that ‘mesh’ with their existing communication and fundraising programmes. This can mean ‘meshing’ a number of things, such as messaging across social media networks, marketing across channels or data across platforms.

So it’s an all-time personal favourite word that means a great deal to me. When it pops up in conversation I have to resist the urge not to imitate a game show gong. Thinking about it, this probably stems from a love of the cult classic ’80s TV show Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which featured a secret word of the day. Each time the secret word was spoken, everyone would scream.

Mesh. Let’s all say it together, shall we?