I started to write this post in the summer, when someone asked me about social networking. As the weather turned cold, and the heating came on, it’s given me the impetus to publish it.
They were quite dismissive.
“I haven’t time for all that nonsense. What on earth do you waste your time with that for?”
Occasionally, I have trouble articulating what I like about social networking, but on this occasion I came up with a couple of examples.
- As a homeworker, it replaces the chat over the desk, or round the watercooler/coffee machine.
- As an inquisitive guy, it opens windows on new things to learn – from some really bright people in a range of industries… including in my own company.
I then had the bright idea of saying “Of course, it was social networking that fixed my heating…”.
When asked, I said I was leaving the pub after a pint, when I met my neighbour. We were chatting about how things were going, and I said my biggest problem was finding a central heating engineer who could cope with an old solid fuel system. He asked the symptoms, and said he was a boiler technician. I expected a punt for a job, but he said “Ach, it’s no your heating. It’s a jammed radiator valve or two; that’s easy to fix”. We had another beer, and I thought no more about it.
The following day, I was in the garden, fixing a light, and he asked if he could pop in. Less than 10 minutes later, he’d fixed what I thought was a heating problem. No, I didn’t pay for the advice; yes, I did buy him another beer.
Social networking isn’t about the tools or technologies. It’s about the connections you make, and what you do with them.
Remember your real world social networking, too…
Image Credit: Coreyu
