Does the internet really connect people?

Sadly the man who delivers straw for me is spending Christmas ill in hospital. He delivers for Betty, a fabulous lady farmer who still manages her farm alone & is well into her seventies. A straw delivery arrived today thanks to one of her neighbours, who is in fact in direct competition with her, as he also sells hay & straw to the local equine fraternity. However, in farming circles there has always been a culture of helping each other out, whether that be by loaning machinery or offering a spare pair of hands at shearing or harvest. Today I went to settle my bill & Betty & I were chatting about her generous neighbour. She remarked that he was a lovely lad & that she knew his parents & their parents & no doubt their parents too.

So what has the above got to do with web 2.0? In this always connected 24/7 culture, interaction has never been so easy. We can connect & communicate on a global scale but are these relationships of real value? How many of our online associates would be prepared to go out of their way to help us out? Fleeting interactions & business networking does not a community make. Saying that, I've met some fabulous genuine friends as a result of the net but it's all to easy to slip into the habit of tweeting & facebooking instead of meeting face to face. So my 2010 resolution is to treasure real friends & spend more time offline with them!

Rage against the machine

So the power of a well orchestrated facebook campaign & the subsequent picking up of the story by mainstream media has beaten the Simon Cowell X factor junket to number 1. Time for the music industry to learn some lessons in 2010 perhaps?!

Gary Vaynerchuk in London

(photo pinched from @IanSanders - thanks!)

Last week I grabbed the opportunity to see the irrepresible Gary Vaynerchuk speak in London about his new book Crush-it.

There's been some great coverage of the event by other attendees so I won't replicate!

@jas filmed the talk which you can view here http://www.thewebpitch.com/videos/gary-vaynerchuks-talk-the-water-poet-london/

Here's Phil Legetter's take on the real time element of the talk http://blog.caplin.com/2009/12/09/how-real-time-does-real-time-have-to-be/

Ian Sanders talks about the importance of word of mouth here http://scrambledup.blogspot.com/2009/12/word-of-mouth-is-on-steroids.html

For me personally seeing Gary speak with so much passion helped to ram home the concept behind his book (& brand full stop). I eventually made it home to Bristol at 2am & last thing I did was tweet about the talk. Within 2 minutes I had a DM from Gary who was still hustling despite a long day & a 5 hour time difference to adapt to as well. A simple thing but I was impressed! This is one man that really walks the walk.

Please whilst in Europe....

..drop the American lingo. The use of "fireside chat" at a tech conference just sounds ridiculous, although perhaps it's meant to be ironic as the Le Web conference 08 was apparently akin to sitting in an icebox.

Gah, can you tell I'm envious of those going, anyone with a spare ticket feel free to throw it my way!