The end of September marked my seven-year anniversary on Twitter. Perhaps not coincidentally, the anniversary occurred on the first day of the 2014 Aggregate Conference, which I was fortunate enough to attend at the invitation of a long-time social networking pal, Ron Bronson, who curated this wonderful little conference.
Ron and I go way back, in Internet years.
Not long after I started this blog in 2005, our digital paths crossed somewhere and we started sharing ideas online about higher ed, digital culture, books and our mutual love of music. (The higher ed blogging community was pretty small back then.) We shared ideas via comments on each other’s blogs. I’d read something on Ron’s blog that would spark my interest, and occasionally I would riff on his idea, if not outright pilfer it.
Eventually more of the discussion moved to Twitter and Facebook. A few years ago, I had an idea to pull together a group of fellow music lovers from the higher ed sphere (there are many of us out there) to create a collaborative group for online music discussion. Ron was one of the first I contacted, even though we don’t always agree on what constitutes good music. But that’s part of the fun of it. I get to learn about new music from Ron, and maybe he even learns something from me in return.
Through the years and the digital ether, Ron and I became friends. But I’d never met Ron, person-to-person, until the Aggregate Conference last Sunday. I met a lot of other longtime social media friends that night and throughout the conference, too.
I’ve written before in this space about how Twitter is my go-to learning network. The people and organizations that I follow are founts of knowledge. We have some great discussions on that network and exchange ideas about all sorts of topics. I think Twitter has made me smarter, thanks to the people I’ve learned from there.
It’s also expanded my network of friends, many of whom I’ve never met in the flesh. That was the case with Ron and several others at the conference — too many to list here.
But there are still many more friends I haven’t yet met in the flesh whom I’ve gotten to know through Twitter. It’s a very cool thing. It’s also kind of weird. But sometimes, cool and weird work out.
Andy writes! 