Connecting to Make a Difference

It has been three days of absolute pleasure in Adelaide.

Firstly, a big shout out and major thanks to Mike, Mandy, Jamie and Jemma Seyfang for their hospitality and recording studio (which doubled as my late night work area and sleep area) for three days.  Oh, and happy birthday Jemma. Getting out of the hotel room shenanigans and living with real people made the difference on this trip.

It also gave Uncle Mike and I to discuss the day’s events in depth, explore ideas and suggest directions. I must deeply thank Uncle Mike for his suggestions on improvements to “The Geek Stories”. Having Australia’s premiere Social Networking thinker at your beck and call night and day, making you cups of tea, is a rare experience.  The value is inmeasurable.

Secondly, a major thanks to my video subjects: Dave “Lifekludger” Wallace, Mike “Fang” Seyfang, Kevin Richardson, Glenn Butcher and Kinglsey Foreman. Unlike last Friday, I purposely spread the video capturing over three days to ensure I was on the ball through all interviews.

Oh, and I rang Robert Scoble after he Twittered he was bored on his way south from Petaluma to his home. That’s California.  Connections and wiring brings us together in strange ways.

Connections. This social networking thing is about connections. Using them to produce value greater than the sum of the parts. A common theme emerging from all my interviews is that either for life (Lifekludger), learning (Kevin) or entertainment (Glenn) humans value connections. Making them, and reinforcing linkages.

With Munge Brother, Uncle Tim Kleemann, we explored this from a business perspective. Tim owns NextByte, and originally hired me way back when I was a pimply kid in 1985. To Tim I owe gratitude for the 21+ years in this crazy industry.

These human traits of wanting connectedness extend to our kids, too. They have strong social networks that extend into the digital world, and outside of school in the home and on the proverbial bus – and the lines between school and home are becoming equally as blurred as work and home. Presence via Messenger; publicity via MySpace and YouTube. All around are connections. Both visible and invisible.

Uncle Mike is exploring some of the learning aspects to these social networks through his work with education.au; Dave experiences this everyday in his extraordinary life.

Ensuring Parents and Teachers understand the environment of social networking in all its forms is the major challenge for technology companies working in this space: Microsoft, Google or whomever. I think the time is ripe for a major model change in the way educators think about online access, and the skills kids are going to need to survive in a smaller, greater connected and information rich world.

Returning to Immanuel to speak to Kevin, I learnt many things. I did not expect this as an old scholar. One learning was that I owe Noel Volk and Greg Sharp a major thankyou. In my school years there was a concious effort to install computers into the school and use these as a part of education. This effort lead me into this industry I now find myself. Money was siphoned off other projects into this some 22 years ago. Like the Angle Park Computer Centre, Abefoyle Park project and others – the product of these efforts have not gone to waste. So thanks.

Internode is a connection company; the interview with Glenn and Kingsley will air sometime next week. Australian gamers know Internode as the best gaming network, and service, around. You can feel their passion for games; a passion that extends from the MD of Internode, Simon Hackett.

I feel that getting people’s stories told, and out there for all to see is important. Geek Stories or not, the connection potential is huge.

Send in your story, and let’s go make a difference.