How to network????

I am a new nurse manager in the ER......a new nurse at that!!! I am on our fall risk committee in the hospital. The risk management person at our facility tends to make blanket statements about new regulations without really understanding what the regulation means. After I got a copy of the fall risk regulation I noticed there are some options for us. ****Up to this point we were doomed to do the fall risk and interventions just like on the floors but it wasn't practicle in our ED so I was very concerned**** One suggestion was to contact other hospitals and find out what they are using and how it is working. So being that we transfer a lot of our patients out, I am comfortable calling other facilities. I called several yesterday starting with the ones closest to us and branching out. I am in California so I even called Stanford and UCLA. I left messages for all except UCLA. The woman was extremely rude to me. She said she didn't have time for this and I asked if there was someone else that I could discuss this with, perhaps the Education department since I know the ED managers are busy! She said no. She was just very abrupt and negative. So that is fine. I expect some people to be like that!
My question is how do I network and meet people from other organizations where I can pull from when trying to improve our organization???