It occurs to me that I havent told much of my story of interconnectedness and the transformative power of the Internet as it played out in my life (and continues to) - so, here goes: In the fall of 1998, a friend of mine then in the Slavic Department at the University of Pittsburgh, Seth Graham, connected me to the now-defunct sixdegrees - an early social networking site. Id already dabbled in Match but here was something different. It was not focused on finding random folks to date, but just a way of connecting to folks and communicating. Id already found email a fascinating way of connecting in the fall of 1994 and built my first Web site using Unix pine protocol to hand code a compendium of links in the summer of 1996. Sixdegrees though allowed me to sort contacts by geography and I struck up a conversation that led me eventually to seek and secure a job in Copenhagen, Denmark. Im grateful to Erik Dibbern Roeser and other colleagues at Web500 for taking the chance on hiring me and supporting my professional networking that led me to still other connections. When that contract fell through along with the fortunes of the company, these connections enabled me to secure an offer to work in Milan (thank you for that Jennifer Carey!) but I opted to return to the states and play it a little safer. A change in flights on the way back from the Milan interview though put me in the position to be able to take another European vacation where I was able to visit another Pittsburgh grad school pal, Deb Gatewood and her husband, Armin Brinzing, at their home in Munich, and join them in a brief reunion with other Pitt denizens then in Europe, Christian Rieser, Gabi Bauer , Tilman Heckel , Donna Bartl and Tobias Bartl. On my way home, Bodil Ott Chemnitz helped me pass the hours of layover in Copenhagen. Id not have kept connected to these folks without the kind of connectivity that simply did not exist prior to the advent of the World Wide Web. In my current job, supporting the efforts at business transformation within the Federal Government, I was able to attend the International Semantic Web Conference in 2008 and shake Sir Tim Berners-Lees hand. His creation, the World Wide Web has helped me form this network of associates that span the globe. Ive just mentioned a few, but these folks are moving and reshaping the world for the better, Im convinced. Left foot in front of right, enriched by the shared experience of living my life among these and so many others of you, FB tribe, Ive ended up sitting here late on a Monday evening in Washington DC and expect that the connections that Ive made will lead me to still other adventures. If not, its been a good life! :-)
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 03:10:57 +0000
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