Shane Perris Mild mannered public servant by day and a mild mannered father and husband by night. Also currently doing post-graduate coursework study on Information Technology. Follow:@smperris Website:http://www.techwhimsy.com/
Social media allows us to make many connections but are they meaningful ones?
From personal experience, more than ever before we can make new social connections and befriend people over a wide range of distance, culture and beliefs. I now know people in most capital cities of Australia, and in a number of regional cities, too.
The recent inaugural Digital Citizens event was chock full of social media inhabitants (enough for a swarm on Foursquare). Some were Social Media Douchebags, most were not. Given that while I was familiar with many of the attendees but only casually so, I took the opportunity to sit back and watch social networks manifest in the flesh. Maybe it’s my training as a sociologist, but I love observing people when they don’t think they’re being observed (not as creepy as it sounds – well, just a little bit creepy, but you know you love it). I was curious about how deep some of these networks really were, and the results were interesting.
I noticed that most people seem to flit from one group to the next, spending only a few minutes at a time with any one group, pressing flesh, maintaining the network and then skipping off to the next group. Rinse. Repeat.
[I’m excluding the organisers of the event from this. Schmoozing is an important part of being a good host.]
Making Social Connections
Comment from:
Shane Perris
Mild mannered public servant by day and a mild mannered father and husband by night. Also currently doing post-graduate coursework study on Information Technology.
Follow: @smperris
Website: http://www.techwhimsy.com/
Social media allows us to make many connections but are they meaningful ones?
The recent inaugural Digital Citizens event was chock full of social media inhabitants (enough for a swarm on Foursquare). Some were Social Media Douchebags, most were not. Given that while I was familiar with many of the attendees but only casually so, I took the opportunity to sit back and watch social networks manifest in the flesh. Maybe it’s my training as a sociologist, but I love observing people when they don’t think they’re being observed (not as creepy as it sounds – well, just a little bit creepy, but you know you love it). I was curious about how deep some of these networks really were, and the results were interesting.
I noticed that most people seem to flit from one group to the next, spending only a few minutes at a time with any one group, pressing flesh, maintaining the network and then skipping off to the next group. Rinse. Repeat.
[I’m excluding the organisers of the event from this. Schmoozing is an important part of being a good host.]
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