Jen McCown (Blog|Twitter) has declared today UnSQL Friday #006. I’m going to try to sneak this one in before Friday ends, and the clock is ticking. No problem, I think it will easy for me to mention what I love about “Living in the Intertubez.”
One of my early benefits when I started participating in twitter was discovering great things happening within blocks of my home and work. For example, there were technology meetings with really awesome folks in my neighborhood. I had been missing out because, quite frankly, sometimes even technology associations have websites so uninspiring that you can’t imagine attending their meetings voluntarily. However, with twitter I could follow members of these organizations and learn that they were amazing… I couldn’t wait to meet them! The internet means empowerment to the people and degrees of independence from the formal communications of stodgy organizations and the masters pulling their strings.
But the reach of twitter went beyond my neighborhood. It meant connecting with people all around the world. Those first few times you meet people in the “real world” who you had only known on twitter is an amazing experience. You just start talking like you’ve known each other for years and pretty much pick up from your last tweet with that person. Who could have imagined such a thing was possible when given 140 characters to work with!
“Living in the Intertubez” played a huge role in my landing in a job more amazing than anything I could have imagined. Actively blogging and tweeting not only kept me in touch with former colleagues, but also provided a sense of what I had been doing to advance my skills and such.
This week I stepped up my “Living in the Intertubez” world by joining facebook. I’d resisted so far because my experience with another social network many years ago soured me on such things. But things change fast in “the Intertubez” and I’m looking forward to learning the lingo of the facebook world.