This quote originally struck me as related to the “echo chamber” effect of social networking. After sitting on it, it’s resonating internally to describe the frustration I’m having connecting deeper with a part of my network that I haven’t had the chance of meeting face-to-face.
We are overdoing the assumption that we are like everybody else. We need to go out to look at what everyone else is like. We need to have a dialog with them and with ourselves about what we are trying to build.
Elizabeth Churchill on Episode #7 of Tummelvision, a new podcast on the TWiT Network that discusses the art and science of using technology to build and engage communities of people.
Disclaimer: I haven’t listened to the podcast.
You said, “After sitting on it, it’s resonating internally to describe the frustration I’m having connecting deeper with a part of my network that I haven’t had the chance of meeting face-to-face.”
I have heard this before and it has always struck me with the same oddness it did when I read it here. In 1995, 15 years ago, I spent a lot of time on bulletin boards. I taught at Valdosta State University at the time in South Ga. Many of my students had never traveled so I used the bulletin boards to help them connect and collaborate with folks from around the world. They would use threaded discussions, email, and occasionally phone calls to get to know folks from cultures very different than their own. It would always be such a thrill to exchange ideas with people in other countries.
During this time I came across a government worker named Don Meyer who lived in Alberta, Canada. We became good friends and celebrated each others birthdays and successes (our families connected as well) and cried at each others misfortune. I learned so much about Canada, the sport of hockey and a great deal more that I would have never of learned if it hadn’t been for the technology and the connection. We sent video tapes back and forth in the mail (VHS) to give life to the concepts we would talk about and that pics couldn’t do justice. Things like Ga red clay, fire ants, and tubing in the creek. Don sent the CNN scrolling across the bottom of TV saying flesh freezes if your spend more than X amount of minutes outside, sent me an Oilers hockey puck and a signed jersey. We came to really know each other and use to laugh about the good we were doing for international relations.
Yet I have never met Don even today. He is my friend. My real friend. We connected.
I can tell stories like this over and over through the years. Come to 2006, 07, 08, and K12Online. For example, Darren Kuropatwa and I know each other– we connect–so much so that we created and ran a successful international conference. I know his kids names, their laugh, his wife, his hopes, and have celebrated his success (such as his new home- we bought homes at the same time) or the birth of his children.
See I do not believe it takes meeting f2f to connect. Their are many people in my network I have met f2f and we didn’t connect. I believe community is about making the time and effort to get to know one another. It is about deep, reflection and long conversations. It is about truly wanting to connect and understand the other person. It is about finding your voice and being able to use it to hear another’s voice. It is about investment in others. It is about collective efficacy–which takes time. It is moving from “what is in it for me” to “what is in it for us” to “what of us is in it” (Howard, 2009). And all of that can be done through text, video, or podcasts without ever meeting in person.