Sunday Tech Invocation: Offline Living in an Online World
We were at an office warming/launch party for f»dforward recently and were surrounded by the usual Dutch suspects from the Internet, Twitterazi crowd here in Amsterdam. But something was different. We thought back to other gatherings we had attended, TechCrunch Europas in London, an e-Unlimited event in Brussels about the Future of Innovation Policy in Europe and we noticed a pattern. People were doing a lot less Twittering at these events. In fact, at the TechCrunch event, I got a text from a Dutch Twitterazi telling me to tweet more cause no one was tweeting. She was right, they weren’t doing their normal volume of Tweets at such an event. Of course there were folks there next to you who you were trying to have a conversation with who were Twittering the conversation you were trying to have, which you were not having. It was an awards ceremony, a celebration and people were uh, celebrating. It’s still hard to drink, applaud and Tweet at the same time.
At this last event, we noticed that people were in general, actually not Twittering, they were actually talking, socializing and having conversations. We had conversations about Twittering, Foursquare and how it motivated you to hold onto your “mayorship”; how delicious a Red Sancerre was; how stay-at-home dads might be raising more well adjusted kid than moms; how the Dutch have one kind of cheese in 45 different varieties; how Sara Lee sneaks her brand into the Netherlands via Douwe Egberts; lessons learned from entrepreneurs; urban sketching (we met a woman there that will blow your mind at how she takes a presentation and intreprets it via illustrations, or sketches); how our last Tattltetech Hot Seat isn’t into money; which month do Dutch women stop wearing boots; artificial intelligence, how newspapers will transform fully to the digital age; why Proscecco is better in the summertime; how good a massage can be from a stranger at this party and most of all, how happy, carefree and at peace people are when they let go of the need to “broadcast” and just engage.
But people did Tweet the event – after the event or on their way home. In fact the next day by 15:00 there were tons of Tweets, photos on Mobypicture (let’s you share your stories) and “thank yous” and “let’s meet up agains”. In real life > digital life > in real life, again.
The point of this ramble? None really, except to say that everything has its place and to connect with people on a personal level, to turn away from the screen and just have a conversation about cheese and not worry about broadcasting that to the world, might just help us be more human and not just a person. – JLH
