I've been pondering on the importance of face to face contact recently. I know we supposedly live in an ultra-connected world where everything is just a click of a button away, but if you simply believe blindly in this hype, I fear you will have a more difficult time.
A couple of weeks ago we were at the Next Web conference and even with out stomachs grumbling we decided we did not want to rush off to get lunch with everyone else as we were certain the hall would be packed. So we stayed behind to code (something we also found ourselves doing if one of the presentations seemed boring). I went to have a brief chat with the conference host, Erick Schonfeld. I was probably daydreaming during the introduction section as I had somehow missed his name and the fact that he was with TechCrunch. So yes, I had totally innocent intentions when walking up to him.
To cut the story short, at the end of that day we got back to the hotel to find a curious spike in our statistics. It appeared Erick had written about us on TechCrunch. That spinned off various other articles in other media. And no, our services did not crash or fold under the high load. No problem whatsoever.
So my basic point here is to talk to people. In the traditional way. No twitters or jaikus or IMs or anything. One mouth, two ears. Don't be obnoxious about it and pushy. In fact, you probably shouldn't even be thinking in that promotional manner, but just trying to get to know interesting people, partners and so forth. Nothing is more satisfactory than shaking someone's hand.
PS. You can view the TechCrunch article here.
New community finance tool strives to keep friends happy with
each other. Friends or partners spending
weekends together hiking, at cottages or abroad easily end up with a large
number of shared costs. Dealing with the receipts and costs afterwards is a
hassle which often ends in conflict. Finnish software company Fishpool
Creations has released a new service,
Scred, for recording shared
expenses and debts with friends, spouses and acquaintances.
Scred focuses
specifically on communities with its concept of 'pools' -- large or small
groups of friends which do things together . It also includes a Java-based
version for mobile phones.
Scred creator, Kristoffer Lawson, says they have been using various
versions of
Scred internally for years. "We even used it on our
trip to search for the mythical Loch Ness monster," Kristoffer
explains, "We did not find any conclusive evidence of Nessie but
more and more of our own friends were signing up to Scred for even
mundane things so we knew we had to try to make something of it".
Armed with many similar experiences in foreign lands
Scred was
created from day one as a tool which would handle multiple currencies,
and their conversions, and which would also work on a mobile phone,
wherever the traveller is and regardless of available connectivity.
About Scred
Scred, The Street Credit, was released to the public in 2008
after a brief public beta phase which started in 2007. It aims to make
tracking debts, money and shared expenses easy and effortless,
anywhere in the world.
Fishpool Creations Oy Ltd is a friendly and relaxed IT company founded in
1995. It focuses on software consultancy in the fields of scripting and
network technologies.
