Thanks very much for your comment. If any of your Yammer colleagues make it this far into this post, they might want to glance at an August recap and update on how I started and how my use has changed. Or another on my opinion about whether you should tweet (answer: how should I know?).

Your experience with online contacts is similar to mine. Years ago I’d meet interesting people in my field mainly through face-to-face events like professional society meetings (local chapters or national organizations), seminars, and workshops. Kind of focused-random.

In the past few years, that’s been supplemented by contact through blogs, then Facebook, then Twitter. And paying attention when Harold Jarche or Janey Clarey mentions someone else does the kind of thing you’re talking about: it tells me more about that other person, and more about Harold or Janet as well.

I got to meet several people this past May; they were attending the ASTD shindig here in DC, and I went into town one evening. (Quality verification for Guinness is a never-ending responsibility.) That was my first meeting with a dozen people I’d been getting to know through their virtual presence.

I’d always liked Lightfoot’s song; I learned only a year or two ago that the launching I attended back in 1958 (because a family friend worked at Great Lakes Steel) was the birth of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

I forwarded this post onto our Yammer network at the day job because you do a really good job of breaking down the activity into terms that outsiders of learning professionals can understand, and to Jane’s earlier comment, it really helps to have something to point out the WIIFM for Twitter, if someone’s not already on Twitter.

Now about the site… To me, it’s critically important in a knowledge community (macro, being the internet, micro being #lrnchat regulars) that we know whom each other are. I’ll be honest, once I met people like Craig, Wendy, Koreen and Mark in-person, I became very invested in keeping up with what they write on their blogs, regardless of whether it’s immediately relevant to me. Clark, especially so, because my first encounter with Mr. Quinn was through his book, so being able to connect through Twitter and then offline — there’s a wealth of context it brings because I know these people as people — not as (in-topic) SMEs.

Because I can now relate to them as people and friends, not as some abstract I don’t have a *relationship* with, I am much more open to receiving their ideas and applying them in the way in which they’re intended — because I can understand the intent.

So, Dave… you keep posting about what’s playing in your car stereo (I love “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”), because knowing that about you colors your tweets, and that fills in the colors of 140 characters.

I can’t say that I’ve had the experience of working with a SME that was my friend, but I would expect that it would be such richer learning produced from the experience.