Today, I had a few moments of synchronicity. On old habit from my army days (taking a moment to snooze) was disturbed on my train journey into London when I recognised a voice from my past. Twenty-two years ago from my past, in fact. The voice was that of Adam Renwick who was my first instructor at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He happened to sit next to me. We caught up, swapped stories and cards, and then went our own ways. It was great to see him.
I went into town for my meeting and then returned to the rail station. Unfortunately, I had some time to kill in the chilly and draughty station amongst the 200 or so other travelers. To keep warm, I was wearing a mac over my suit, a thick woolly scarf and Tweed cap. When not catching up on emails on my Blackberry or being bumped by bustling passengers, I was looking at my temporary companions.
It dawned on me just how few people were wearing a hat in view of the cold weather. Anyone who spends time outside knows that a hat is one of the most important pieces of kit to keep warm. But, it appears that only three of us knew this and were wearing hats.
With my emails done, I fired up the Twitter client on my Blackberry (ÜberTwitter), and sent out a tweet (which also goes to my Facebook profile) highlighting my 'hat watch' findings. A few minutes later, I noticed a reply to my tweet from William Wright (@mrwilliam) who presents on BBC Radio saying he had mentioned my tweet on air (You can listen to the clip in the attached Posterous audio post). Shortly afterwards I received a comment from the tweet on Facebook from another old contact from my army days reassuring me that hats were 'cool'. Another ex-colleague from Microsoft commented on Facebook the fact that she was in her office and wearing a hat too! I reassured her that hats were still 'cool'.
The train was called and I found a welcome seat in the warm carriage and proceeded to do the crossword on a free newspaper I had picked up. I soon became stuck on a clue and resorted to some help from my friends on Twitter who soon came back with some ideas on the answer. A current work colleague who had replied with a clue also put in the word 'iPad' as a joke. Moments later his humourous tweet had been re-tweeted by someone who had picked up that particular keyword but who had not understood the meaning of my colleagues tweet.
By chance, the man who was sitting next to me had a rather nasty personal habit which involved him chewing his fingers persistently from Kings Cross station to St Neots which is about 45 minutes in total. I felt compelled to let people know about the minor amount of suffering I was going through and the replies from my friends were very witty. I also took a surreptitious photo on my Blackberry and sent it out to show the disgusting habit!
So, what does all of this mean? Well, people keep talking about 'web 2.0' being about conversations as if a conversation was a new thing. Of course, it is not. But conversation these days can be far more fluid and they are not just with people close by. They can be with people who are miles away from you and you never know what people will be interested in, no matter how trivial.
Posted via email from digi-business.net
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