Inspired

At work everyone is tired of me telling them to create a Twitter account and connect it to professional social media pages. They have been slow to adopt the technology as a means of professional connection and education while I am regularly commenting on the different things I read in articles shared by my personal learning network. Their usual response is, “that’s great for you and thanks for passing it on to us.”

I have my elevator speech down for the benefits of using different social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ in particular) for curating high quality connections to resources. Beyond having a stream of useful material at my fingertips, I develop relationships with other highly-motivated professionals. Exchanges can be a highlight of my day.

Personally, I have social networks mostly for fun. I keep up with headline news because it is more efficient that going to the news websites and some people just because the are funny.

Monday I noticed that, without intending to, I had started following a number of Twitter accounts that regularly post uplifting / motivational / inspirational quotes. Monday night I found myself going to the various profiles and reading the streams of messages because I needed a little pick-me-up after dealing with some issues from various friends in the previous days.

After this experience I have added yet another reason I appreciate social media: inspiration.

Connected

Every once in awhile I get to have one of those weeks that defies all expectations. The past week has been one of those.

I had high expectations for the conference I attended in Chicago. Several co-workers had attended the same conference some times before and they all had raves for the information they gained from the sessions and the resources. I went looking forward to some sessions that were very topical to the work I did on a daily basis. Mostly I went hoping to meet in person some of the professionals I had chosen to follow as a part of my PLN (Personal/Professional Learning Network). Based on their output through various social media sites, I learned to value the information they shared and have followed their online sharing of personal learning and the learning of others through links.

I have gained more from them in the last few months than I have in the last few years of professional development sessions. They have the answers I need when I need them.

They are uncannily perceptive sometimes - even though they do not know me.

My hopes were not dashed. I had the opportunity to spend far more time with my internet idols than I expected. At best I had hoped to recognize them in passing and introduce myself. Instead, I spent several hours with them in conversation and they introduced me to even more. In addition to the volumes of information I had learned on their Internet output, I learned even more with them and even gained some ideas about future work to do here in Austin.

While I expected valuable information in conversation with them, a random conversation at the hotel bar provided the biggest surprise. It started with the bartender asking me a bit of television trivia (because I looked like a smart guy) and ended in conversation with the person who originally posed the question. The conversation did not stay trivial for long and by the end of the evening he promised to send me the introductory parts of the manuscript for a book he was writing. The story he has to tell is one every educator should read when considering the smart kid who just does not do his work. There is always more to the story than we know and he provides a face for the rest of the story.

He actually sent the manuscript to me and we have maintained an email dialogue since then.

People who know me well know how difficult it is for me to talk to new people.  As a professional, the need to connect exceeds my natural shyness - that is one reason I like the opportunities that exist in social media (Twitter, Facebook, Google+). They suffice to initially make contact with others until the point that they are no longer strangers. After reaching that point, the face-to-face is a comfortable next-step rather than a mandated social norm. Being of the age and generation that I am, I do still long for the personal connection despite my initial shyness. As valuable as my virtual friends are, there is something special about a face-to-face conversation that surpasses the screen-to-screen text chats.

The biggest challenge in the last week has been keeping up with and doing something with the new knowledge and connections. While I get it all processed I think sleep will just have to wait.

Social Network

         When I was growing up, my social network was made up of friends who lived within bike-riding distance. I lived eleven miles from town, so the social network was pretty limited. We had a party-line (look it up, children – anyone under 30), so phone conversations were might have been shared with all the five numbers that shared the line. If we, the kids, wanted to talk, it meant getting on the bike and going to see one another face-to-face.

         As a result, I had three friends with whom I interacted socially on a regular basis through most of my childhood. The introvert in me liked that. Of course there was school and church with the opportunities to interact with others, but my social network of three was about right for me.

         As an adult, with the advent of the Internet, social networking became a global experience. I have made and maintained “friends” with people from around the globe. I maintain two Facebook pages, two Twitter accounts, three blogs, a LinkedIn account, and a website. Through the various social networks, I am in contact with nearly a thousand people on a somewhat regular basis.

         I have three friends with whom I interact socially on a regular basis. The introvert in me likes that.

         Everyone with whom I interact through the social networks is someone with whom I have some kind of connection. On my personal Facebook page, I know every single person personally. Through my professional Facebook page and LinkedIn account, I either know the person or know them through professional connections. Twitter is the one medium through which I connect to people I do not know personally, but whose content is something I enjoy. As a result, Twitter is the most fluid of the social networks based on those I follow or allow to follow me, but it has led to a partnership and one of the closest friendships I have today.

         The Manti Te’o scandal over the last week has once again drawn social networking into the forefront of public discussion. How could someone actually be drawn into a relationship with someone he has never met? How could someone experience grief over the death of someone they have never met in person? Have these critics never heard of Match.com or one of the other dating sites? Some surveys indicate online dating sites are becoming THE way most singles meet others for dating.

The whole concept of “catfishing,” or drawing someone into a relationship with a fictional individual suddenly came back into our vocabulary (after being introduced through the 2010 documentary). I find it fascinating that someone would go to all the trouble to invent an entirely different life in the hopes of ensnaring the target. It says far more about their mental unwell-being than it does about the ensnared. Most people are innately trusting until someone gives them a reason not to trust.

Social media are designed to connect people and I confess. There are some people I now know and hold in high esteem I met through my original blog. I even made a 24-hour round trip to New York to meet a group of bloggers in person. One blogger organized it because she wanted to meet the people who interacted with her writing. I am still in contact with several of those bloggers six years later. That community of people interacting with one another spanned coast-to-coast and northern-border to southern-border. While each of our blogs reflected the individual personalities, we all shared common interests which connected our blogs in the first place.

Those who wonder whether social media can lead to relationships have likely not fully engaged in the media. The media are designed specifically to foster relationships. Whether they develop into real-life friendships as several of mine have done or even a romantic link (as I keep hoping will happen), the nature of social media encourages connections. Because I am such an introvert by nature, I find it much easier to establish some common grounds before meeting a person. The connections through my blogs and twitter have brought meaningful people in my life with a means to communicate inherent in the media. Those people whom I have met, I look forward to seeing from time to time when I am in their city or they visit mine. My online social networks are ever expanding and are for the most part enriching.

Just as the bicycle limited my social network when I was a child, I keep just a limited set of friends with whom I interact regularly. I like and value the thousands: I need the few.