Connects and Disconnects February 20, 2008
Posted by jerikpotter in Age of Conversation, Blogging, Connections.Tags: Connects, Disconnects, Drew McLellan, Gavin Heaton, Geoff Livingston, Kris Hoet, Luc Debaisieux, Northern Illinois University, Oovoo.com, Paul Mcenany
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It’s been a surreal few days for me so this post will follow that vein. I awoke to the news of the tragedy at Northern Illinois University on Friday. A lone gunman walked into a classroom and opened fire killing five students and wounding others. For the gunman, there existed a terrible and incomprehensible disconnect between his world and the real world. There is speculation the incident could have been caused by the gunman going off of his medications. Yet, he was conscious enough to remove the hard drive from his computer and the SIM card from his cell phone.
The outpouring of community support since the tragedy has been tremendous. Virginia Tech has reached out to NIU to offer what advice and support they can. Virginia Tech basketball fans are being encouraged to where NIU colors at games. The overflowing turnouts at memorials have been equally moving. So while the act was the result of some disconnect, the NIU community has grown stronger.
“A heightened sense of togetherness now felt on campus is a wonderful thing purchased at a horrible price,” said Jonathan Perry, director of counseling at the University of Arkansas.
Juxtapose to Saturday afternoon. I participated in my first Oovoo.com chats. It started off with what turned into a one-on-one conversation with Geoff Livingston, author of Now is Gone. We discussed the steps necessary of introducing social media into your overall marketing strategy. He also introduced me to the concept of the “magic middle” (which I’m happy to be a part of at the low end of the scale).
A couple hours later, I was talking about the next Age of Conversation book with Gavin Heaton, Drew McLellan, Luc Debaisieux, Kris Hoet, and Paul Mcenany. It was a crazy and contagious mixture of dialects and time zones. Kris and Luc joined us from Belgium, Gavin in Australia, Paul in Texas, and Drew and me in Iowa.
The connecting nature of this technology was an eye opening experience. You can now enjoy an immediate and engaging conversation with anyone in the world one on one. Where blogging opened the door for conversation, oovoo has the capacity to eliminate any latency issues with your discussions. The feedback is immediate.
The possibilities are endless: virtual conferences, virtual jam sessions with musicians around the world, the discussion/sharing of diagnosis with doctors anywhere, or one-on-one counseling. What other uses of this technology can you envision?
It was a great conversation, wasn’t it? And probably an interesting juxtaposition to the tragedy at NIU.
Here’s a man who had no connections. Felt alone and had no community where he felt like he mattered or was accountable. I think our world is both a dangerous and painfully lonely place when we don’t belong any where.
That’s one of the things I love most about social media. It allows us to form all kinds of connections — some tighter than others, but connections just the same.
The tools are powerful and we can use them to lift each other up.
Couldn’t agree more, Drew. Connections would have helped in the NIU tragedy. Would friends or connections have picked on this as a possible path for this individual?
Which begs the question, if they did suspect something, would they speak up about it or call someone out?
From my experience, there appears to be no shortage of people willing to call someone or something out in the blogosphere.
That bravado changes for a lot of people in the “real” world.
Thanks for stopping by.