Connecting networks across borders

Today I decided to mix the InterNations network with twitter, let's see if the seed sprouts:


The purpose of this is as obvious and simple as it is limited - to enable InterNations people to find each other on twitter, and to make InterNations a little bit more visible on twitter. Can't be all bad, can it?

InterNations is a pretty amazing network with local chapters in lots of cities around the globe, but it is facing an ongoing discussion on how to relate to existing and possibly competing networks. My spirit, coming from the Gnosjö area, is simple - be great at what you do, and be open and friendly to everyone else. Isolationism doesn't work.

Sometimes people as for my email, or my blog, or my flickr page, and I am a little confused everytime. What do you mean? Google me? Use "unclecj" as my nickname if you're lazy. I do keep some sort of list of where I have my profiles on different networks, but it is poorly updated so finding one service through the other or google are more reliable.

I am not kidding when I say that I am almost everywhere. It's great when the networks lower the threshold for people to get hooked by turning the signup the right way around for example by using cookies, allowing you to claim the account later, or using either of Google Friend Connect, Facebook Connect, Yahoo! OpenID, Windows Live ID or just OpenID. Asking someone to sign up is a huge threshold, if you manage a network you have to deal with that. Knowing this, I disregard the threshold and allow myself to create accounts everywhere, but I am not an average user...

So, to not make this a lenghty post - see you on the internets, anywhere!

(PS. If you're interested in seeing more of InterNations, it's an invite only network, but I can get you in, just drop me a line with your email address)

My first time at OpenCoffee Club Tallinn

 

Not sure if this belong in this blog or the nerd blog, since it's about techie stuff in Estonia - but I visited the Open Coffee Club Tallinn today.

In Ülemiste City Mercado it's a bit out of the way, but it was so worth it. I was a bit shy before, thinking that maybe everyone would be speaking Estonian and all too serious for my sort of... freely associative thinking.

Turned out I recognized the first guy I walked into, and essentially the second one as well, we took a table for ourselves and the event took off! It was very nice, somewhat professionally rewarding and great for ideas. Actually, one guy into SEO essentially repeated one of my favorite ideas out to me, word by word :-) . Proves one of my principles of that you're not usually alone about great ideas, you must dare to check out the competition.

Some of you readers may still think Estonia is a backwards Eastern European country, but the Tallinn OpenCoffee Club, and something I saw the other day reminded me that's not the case. In Sweden I've always been reminded not to bring gadgets out in public, and you're a bit of a freak to work on the laptop in a café - in the Viru Keskus mall the other day, there were three different people sitting on the benches by the escalators with their laptops, one of which was a MacBook Pro. That's so non-Swedish.


By the way, you cool people I met there, maybe you want to follow my twitter, jaiku or other stuff online.

If you couldn't come this time, next time if you feel that some networking and cool discussions would do you better than spending that hour in the office, just come show up! Come and go whenever it suits you, and if you don't know anyone, squeeze into some conversation. Also I noticed at least two groups with English as primary language, so that was no problem either.