Two degrees of separation: a coincidental world

It’s open season for conferences in Australia, and I’m keeping my end up. In the past few weeks I’ve attended 3 conferences interstate, and I’m struck, even moved, by a definite trend. At all three I have been ‘reunited’ with people I have met through a web-based social network: just for example, at Connecting Up in Brisbane I met Brett Hooker of Roarz and Kim Sheree of CarpeDiem , whom I met through LinkedIn via the amazing Sonja Bernhardt (the networking guru and IT entrepreneur) .

Also at Connecting Up, I met Beth Kanter, international blogging legend, who has just encountered Australian blogging queen SilkCharm through Twitter – I met SilkCharm at the national Public Affairs Conference in Sydney after being introduced to her through Liz James of social networking business GaggleHouse (more to come soon on that subject).

Any claims that cyberspace makes people antisocial have been smashed by the social web.

I am sure all this synchronicity will have a deeper impact, let’s watch what happens next. PS: join me on Twitter

No I don't know how it works yet either.

Ash shows that Karma is a two-way street

Ashley Rosshandler of Karma Currency opened his presentation at Connecting Up 2008
with a joke about chooks but followed through with a peck at the gift wrapped prize he'd won as Top Innovator in the nonprofit IT sector at the Australian Community ICT Awards.
Ash quickly recycled his food and wrappings around the room (hmm... kept the wine). Point taken, Ash - we'll make sure it doesn't happen again :-)

Climate change? Call it climate chaos

In Brisbane at the Connecting Up conference. What an awesome job Doug Jacquier and his team have done. There is a huge buzz in the air and the first day wrapup was standing room only to hear Richard Neville talk about the future. The comment that sticks in my head is “don’t call it ‘climate change’ – it sounds like a holiday in the Bahamas”.