Stalked by Fellow DC Metroblog Authors
Last night I got photographed by Wayan Vota, who showed up where I was having dinner, and today Tom Bridge stopped me at Murky Coffee, saying he recognized me from that picture. I feel like I have a good group of people I sort of know through various online communities and now they are coming out of the woodwork and becoming real instead of virtual.
Wayan and Tom are not the only two I have met recently after corresponding online for a while. I also recently got to meet Phil Shapiro, who is an author of children’s books and general IT guru, and Jill Foster, who is doing a really cool documentary called Living with Geeks. Both these people are active members of DC Media Makers, another mainly online entity.
Worlds collide! The online world and physical space I live in are intertwining in really cool ways. I think this is one of the coolest things about the web – being able to generate communities that start online and carry over to real human interaction. I know it’s nothing new and that this has been the basic operation model for online dating for quite a while, but it still thrills me to see these different worlds intersect.
Though i like the anonymity of being on-line to the extent that one can be anonymous on the http://www...
I like the intersection as well – but have to agree with MBFAN#2 that there is still a need for anonymity (hence the pseudonym).
Hey Carl – Thanks for describing your intersections. That community inspiring potential in both virtual and physical worlds is a powerful (fun!) part of the Net. This election cycle will really see the fruits (and challenges) of that I believe.
I think it depends on what your professional risks are and what you’re interested in talking about online. My field is pretty forgiving in a lot of ways and I’m not interested in the areas where it’s not. What I’m interested in talking about online it’s all that risky or salacious. Consequently I use my real name here and the places where I have a nickname are still pretty easy to figure out who I am.