An Interview with DigiDave - Dave Cohn about first steps into social media

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I met Dave Cohn (aka Digidave) at the Netsquared Conference where I did a quick video interview with him about getting started in social media. (Dave did a video interview of me about the cute dog theory)

Dave won the Knight News Challenge and with the grant money he will build a nonprofit to pioneer community funded reporting.  The site is called Spot.Us.  I enjoy reading his blog.  So, it was nice to connect face-to-face and do more than wave hello.

That reference is from a conversation that Liz Strauss started about lasting relationships and 15 second friends.  Rachel Happe wrote a blog post back in February called "Relationship is development process and technology can help (sometimes) and in the comments of a post that I wrote musing on what Liz and Rachel wrote, Rachel observes:

I've been at two conferences recently where I've met a large number of people that I had only talked to online and it has been a rich experience because they are people I may have never otherwise walked up to out of the blue but because there had been a shared context we immediately had something to discuss. Interestingly, for me it means I say less 'hello' and more of 'tell me more about x...'

Yes, this resonates and my meeting Dave is a great example - I got to know him first via conversation in the comments of our blogs.   Someday, maybe Rachel, Liz, Dave, and I will find ourselves at the same conference or cafe table and have a fabulous face-to-face conversation about social media, relationships, citizen journalism, business and social media and nonprofits!   Meanwhile,  we can do it via our blogs!

 

Comments

[Liz Strauss]

That's it exactly! We find each other, talk and share thoughts, and then when we meet, it's richer and more powerful because we've bypassed the need to find out if we are alike. We're already friends who want to share who we are more.

[Rachel Happe]

Hi Beth - Considering that we both live in the same neighborhood (or so I hear) it is funny that we may need to find an event to actually meet :) In the meantime, I feel like we've been having a fascinating conversation so I am looking forward to meeting you - and Liz & Dave!

I have been amazed by the ability of social networking to introduce me to a whole new collection of interesting people instead of just the more traditional view of its ability to keep up with people I already know.