I came up to San Francisco today to see what was going on around the Web 2.0 conference. I don’t have a conference pass, so I’m sitting in one of the lounges working. I’ve seen a few familiar faces around and even ran into my friend and fellow ex-Yahoo Randy across the street when I went to grab lunch.
When I was at Yahoo, I didn’t do a lot of conference attending. But now that I’m free, it’s a great way to get out and meet the folks you know, but don’t really know. It’s also interesting to look at the way that real connections form. For instance, I just had this conversation with Stowe Boyd (who I met just briefly over the weekend):
Me: Hi, Stowe. Ryan Kuder. We met at the BBQ on Sunday.
Stowe: Hi, Ryan. How are you?
Me: Good, thanks.
Stowe: I think I read something from you today…
Me: Oh…I commented on your John Edwards post.
Stowe: Riiiight.
Me: All right. I need to go find power. See you around.
“I think I read something from you today.” “I commented on your post.” Never would have had that conversation two years ago. And yet here are two people, virtual strangers, who have a point of reference for a social interaction. Things like this happen all over the place.
Think of all of the different ways that you communicate with people. Or even better, think of all of the different ways you have the opportunity to communicate with people, whether you do or not. You might be surprised how much of the conversation can happen outside the formal channels and how you may not even realize it. Where you communicate, what you say, who you say it to…these are all indicators of who you are, how you think, who you know, and what you’re doing. And collectively, each of these points of contact helps build real human relationships. There’s a powerful network out there that lets total strangers pick up a dialog from a point well after the conversation started.
Social networking on line is great. But underlying it all are human connections. Whether it’s between you and someone else, or your brand and a customer, or total strangers. Behind every screen name and avatar is a person who you just might run into at a conference at Moscone Center one day.
1 response so far ↓
1 Lee // Apr 23, 2008 at 4:33 am
You are so right, Ryan! I’ve already met two people from Twitter with whom we’ve had mutual connections. Last week I was in Chicago with my son for a hockey tournament and met up with a wonderful woman I met on Twitter! She and I had been exchanging tweets and had found an online connection and trusted each other enough to allow that to move to a real-world F2F interaction that I know will continue to grow. I’ve had the same experience with another galpal on Twitter, where we ended up sharing a hotel room at FETC. I also enjoy interacting with my friends and watching their “updates” but the magic of Twitter comes from the unexpected tweets from some of those non-friends who send comments here and there that bring new light into our conversations. BTW, I twittered the scores of my son’s hockey games as they occurred and it was like having my friends at the games with me as they twittered their tweets back. And, when there was a scary accident on the ice where my son’s teammate was rushed to the hospital with a neck injury (turned out OK) and I twittered that we were on the way to the hospital, it gave me comfort to receive tweets back from my friends (many of whom follow my updates but don’t tweet often…). How cool is that? I even got a great recommendation on a steakhouse while in Chigaco from another Twitter friend… oh, yeah… YOU! Gibson’s was Awesome! That’s me in front freezing in the brown jacket. Still a Florida girl!
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