The Virtual Meeting Coach

Whew, I think I’m starting to get social media well enough to quit kicking constantly and take a little rest. For a minute.

Truly useful insights came this week from reading John Borthwick, Marcia Connor, and Tony Karrer’s thoughts about what people are doing participating on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media — including live-tweeted seminars and webinars.

As I catch my breath and let my legs dangle for a little bit, I’m relaxing into the realization that publishing and meeting are mashing up.

As more and more of us just let go of the side of the pool and swim out into the deep waters of online relationship, we’re “meeting” and “distributing” at the same time. Human communication has always served many functions at once. But the possibilities offered by social media (including live virtual meetings) are really stirring things up.

From out here in the deep, I can see that most newspapers are gonna be gonners. No amount of refinancing will change anything. And magazines are either going to become clubs where all the members publish or they’re gonna die, too. But there’s actually a lot more going on than that.

For sure, as Karen Stephenson says, human beings have begun “storing our knowledge in our friends.” But we’re also finding new ways to store other people’s knowledge in our friends, too. And that has huge implications for all media distributors. Makes my head hurt stretching my mind around that one.

Social media is a much bigger thing than I can understand yet.

Sure is nice finding ScribeFire to support my blogging this week. It’s going to take quite a bit of writing to help me get my thoughts clear while I kick around out here so far away from familiar shores.

Right now though, I notice I’m asking myself over and over, “When we meet virtually, where are we meeting?” And, “Who are we, anyway?” I’m not talking about the tools, now. I’m talking about the place of mind we meet. Where exactly is that? Who is that “we” that’s following me on Twitter? Who are all those “we’s” I’m part of when I’m following someone, especially someone I haven’t met yet F2F? And how are we ever going to keep track of all those fluid identities?

Deep water.