Learning with the Fang

Sometimes our online social networks yield surprising results in the fleshly ‘world of atoms’.
Yesterday was no exception.
My buddy Dave ‘LifeKludger’ Wallace often leads me to moments of profound elucidation.
Yesterday he did this by NOT being there.

Thanks to my piss-poor organisational skills, a forgotton Christmas pageant and some unseasonally hot weather, I managed to turn a proposed meeting with Nancy White and Dave into a last minute public ‘tweet-up’ which failed to attract a single person via twitter. What happened instead was a wonderful gathering of fascinating people with amazing connections to networks that LifeKludger has been trying to find and engage with for ages.

Lets start with a description of what happened before I try to analyze what I think happened.

When Dave and I heard that Nancy was coming to Adelaide, we thought it would be great to catch up and reflect on what we have learnt since our first meeting in Dave’s office just over three years ago. A few tweets were sent, a blog consulted and a loose plan to catch up on Saturday morning began to hatch. Due to a crazy work week (and the fact that Dave’s airconditioned office in the city dissapeared along with his job thanks to economic rationalism) I suggested 9am in the Adelaide central market where Nancy and I first met. By Friday night it was obvious that it would be just too hot and too hard for Dave to make it, so we threw it open to the entire twitterverse. Nancy asked me to email some guy called Mark and I rang a chap named Chris who had expressed an interest in meeting Nancy.

At 8.00am on Saturday it was already hot enough to boil a monkey’s bum, and while I was loitering about the house my wife pointed out that it was the day of the Christmas pageant and that my plan to drive to Uni and catch the tram from there was not gunna fly. She kindly drove me into the central markets and I went straight to the ‘Providore’ stall to see if there was still a chocolate fountain, and if some kind of ‘flash-mob’ had assembled. Turns out there were two chocolate fountains, and not an iPhone totting twitter mobster in sight. Nancy arrived and we had a quick chat before John arrived, then Mark followed by John’s business partner, Chris. So, who are these people?

Chris and John run a local consultancy called ‘Helpful Partners’ who specialise in making complex information clear and accessible.

Mark is the ‘old tool’ responsible for the awesome ‘Institute of BackYard Studies‘ home of shed culture and master of the great Australian piss-take. Someone I’ve been wanting to meet for a long time (thanks GB) Author of fine books like :

• Blokes and Sheds
• Henry Hoke’s Guide to the Misguided
• Makers, Breakers and Fixers
• Rare Trades: making things by hand in the digital age

How does this connect with LifeKludger?

As we talked around the table about who we are and what we do, I found myself gushing forth about my desire to grow an ‘ecosystem for enriching human life‘ and listening to amazing stories of connection with networks of ‘makers‘, ‘givers‘ and even ‘suppliers‘. Mark ‘I tinker therefore I am’ Thomson spends a lot of time connecting with and documenting some of the most amazing makers on the planet – who have used ingenuity to survive, nay thrive in the harsh land of Aus. As we discussed tinkering projects from ram-jets to hand-held gene sequencers Nancy bought us back to earth with wonderful stories of soapbox derbys and slow food. Chris and John described some ideas they have for clients in the health sector, many of whom are givers seeking to extend their caring over the spectrum from individual to (online) networks. All very ‘LifeKludger ish’ if you ask me. (Dave, plan for a long Skype call – I ain’t gunna try to write it all down).

How did Dave elucidate my scattered thoughts by NOT being there?

I sent this tweet just after I listened to Nancy’s keynote on my way into the IPAS launch (which, according to Nancy, ‘nailed’ the thesis of her kenote addressing the spectrum from individuality through community to networks):

fang #edayz09 a community would notice @dnwallace is not here, the network simply drops the (weak) connection … @nancywhite keynote reflection.

You see, Dave knows a thing or two about community, especially online community. He is also a world leader in online social networks. Talking with Nancy, Mark, John and Chris I could literally see some of the interesting connections and nodes – people like Genevieve Bell, Beth Kanter, Marnie Webb, Doug Jacquier and many, many more. As he so dramatically points out through his own experience – most of the online activity people like to call ‘online community’ is not community at all. Communities notice when somebody goes missing or falls upon hard times. Dave has been out of work for a long time now, thanks to some excessively brutal economic rationalism at the State Government level. LifeKludger blog posts are few and far between, our extraordinary everyday lives podcast is losing momentum and the twitterverse has simply routed around the loss of @dnwallace lurking and tweeting. Networks scale and route around damage – communities need a sense of place (or at least centrality) and do not scale.

Analysis – what I think happened:

Last week was a huge one for me with two events (the #wine2030 BlueSky2009 conference and launch of IPAS ) at which I wove some online social media magic. The IPAS launch on Friday 13th clashed directly with the edayz09 event that I wanted to be involved with, and was, thanks to the skillful weaving of Kerry Johnson. In particular, Nancy White’s keynote presentation was scheduled for the exact time at which I had to make most critical preparations for the IPAS launch. Because of this, and the fact that Dave was not going to be able to play the role of ‘remote podcast producer’ and record it for me, I decided to record and publish an .mp3 file of her keynote from the #edayz audio stream.

more yada yada…

You know, if I try to write down all the connections and thoughts that fired during this tweetup I will never finish the post. Speshully if I bang on about the trip home, post pageant apocolypse, the pint of kilkenny and kerfuffle that followed. So, I’m gunna publish it now, half finished half-arsed and I bet nobody notices. Did you really read down to here or did you scroll down! Shame on you ;-)

http://tr.im/postpageantapocalypse

http://www.slideshare.net/choconancy/should-we-use-community-edayz09-keynote
http://kerryj.com/2009/11/12/covering-edayz09-todays-coveragetomorrows-schedule/comment-page-1/#comment-2485

<<<note to self send mark lifekludger and mecart pics and links + letterbox photosynth

Fang – Mike Seyfang

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