When Networks Collide

This past Monday, I ventured to the Old City section of Philadelphia for a planning meeting for BarCamp Philly. I've never been to a BarCamp, a Podcamp, an Ignite event, or any other social media meetup aside from Harrisburg's monthly Tweetups, but I knew that by participating in the planning, I'd feel more comfortable attending the unconference on November 8th.

So I met some of my Twitter friends, gloriabell and phillygrub, then met some new ones, like interjection and stellargirl at IndyHall (link to their site). After the planning, though...the fun stuff happened.

We made the decision earlier in the day to go to National Mechanics (an awesome Old City bar) to watch the World Series. This was game 5...the one that will go down in history as the first-ever, suspended (due to rain) World Series game. My new "Philly network" was about to collide with my "high school network" since some of my old high school buddies live in the city. After a few direct messages via Twitter, jcourts shows up, along with a few friends. THEN, a local (as in, lives near me, not near the city) decided to meet us at natmechanics for the game. I ended up hitching a ride home with him (he's not on Twitter...yet), thus saving myself the jog in the rain to catch Septa home!

With all the social networking these days, MySpace for "teens", Facebook for "students", LinkedIn for "professionals", Twitter for...umm...everybody, it's interesting to start seeing these different networks collide like they did for me Monday. I only wonder how many of us are ready for these types of collisions...

photo credit: ME!

p.s. WOOHOO PHILLIES!!! CONGRATS ON WINNING THE '08 WORLD SERIES!!!