I had a lovely dinner last night in LA's Chinatown with Annenberg grad student Richard Hodkinson, which reminded me of how much fun it is to spend informal social time with people who share some of my intellectual passions.
When I got back to my room, I started thinking about how I was going to get to the ocean on Sunday--it would be criminal to fly to LA and see nothing but sidewalks and conference rooms. I was feeling sad that so few of my LA-based friends were in town this weekend, and that I wouldn't have someone to chat and banter with as I wandered.
Before I turned the computer off, though, I took a quick look at my buddy list, and discovered that my good friend Simon Phipps, with whom I almost never cross paths in the real world, had an iChat status line that read "Ventura, CA".
For those of you who don't know California, Ventura is just north of LA--about an hour away in light traffic. I immediately pinged Simon, and discovered that not only was he there, but that he also had all day Sunday free before flying to a business meeting on Monday. Woohoo!
So later this morning he's going to drive down to LA, pick me up at the hotel, and we're off to play at the Apple Store (I've never been to one, can you believe it?) and the shore.
To me, that's the best part of social software. Not the use of the tools themselves, but the way they facilitate opportunities in the "real world." Without IRC and AIM at the symposium, I probably wouldn't have ended up having dinner with Richard. And without the tagline on Simon's iChat account, I'd never have known that we were close enough on this trip to actually spend time together. But because of those social software tools, my trip to LA has been immeasurably enriched.
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