EveryMoment: a blog, a video blog, a photo blog and any other type of log of the life of tracy apps. every moment in life is a gift

well hello there. it’s nice to see you again, my dear blog. sorry for neglecting you for so long. please forgive me.

let me tell you a (really long) story of last weekend. there was this thing called podcamp boston 3, which took place in, yep, you guessed it, boston. i had made these plans to go to boston way back in april of this year, right after i saw sooooo many of my awesome seesmic friends all meeting up at podcamp new york. i will admit.. i became instantly jealous. so i set my sights on the next podcamp that i knew some of my friends would also be attending. so plans for boston were made.

after looking at the insanely expensive price of hotels in boston… i booked a 4 bed room at the YMCA‘s hostel. w00t. i had the wonderful pleasure of rooming with rayanne (@rlangdon), miranda (@ilovecpstyle), rick (@raweiss) and the most heavenly box fan. the most interesting thing about the housing arrangements, is that i had never met these three people in person. they drove all the way from toronto, canada.. and arrived in boston around 7am boston time.

i arrived in boston on thursday, and since i tweeted my whole journey… i got a direct message from @orchid8 with instructions to come out for drinks with her and @philcampbell… which was simply awesome. sarah and phil were just as amazing in person as i knew them online. and btw… yes.. this was another two people i had never met before going to boston. they kept buying me drinks. that turned out to be dangerous.

then friday started the pre-podcamp festivities. the canadian trio took a bit of a nap, after driving all night. my friend @nikkiana took a quick trip down to boston to hang out at a coffee shop with free wi-fi. the pre-podcamp meetup was at some sports bar right by fenway park. (lets just say that i probably wouldn’t have been in this bar if it weren’t for meeting up with some of my amazing seesmic/twitter friends. ) here started a very interesting phenomenon that continued throughout the weekend. the seesmic people instantly had a deeper bond than all the other attendees. it was almost like we had known each other for years… and not months.. or weeks. hugs were instantly exchanged. laughs were a plenty… and pretty much every moment was photographed, videoed, tweeted, plurked, dented or otherwise documented.

throughout the weekend, we attended sessions, seesmiced, chatted, hung out, chatted, seesmiced, laughed, partied, and acted like the best of friends. most of the sessions were filled with information we already knew. but the value of the weekend was in the networking. the human interaction. the “after parties”. the people.

since this is already painfully long, i won’t go into many other details of the events of saturday and sunday.. but i will just say that the podcamp planned parties ended up being horribly disappointing. not because of the people.. but the location. i don’t enjoy paying $20 for a single drink at a bar. i’m not a fan of the run of the mill “sports bar” either. the “seesmic crew” ended up leaving many of these parties and starting our own party. now those were the best moments.

now this leads me to more deeper (more deeper? what?) thoughts on this phenomenon. why did we instantly have this deep connection with people we had never met? there were lots of people at podcamp. some people who knew each other for a long time on the web. but there was something deeper about the connection between people who were friends on seesmic. first off.. for those who don’t know what seesmic is, it’s a video conversation engine. basically like a chat room or a message board.. but all video. there’s definitely a more personal connection with someone you can see and hear. you can see their eyes.. you can read their body language… you can hear their tone of voice… you can see them smile.. you can more easily understand their humor/sarcasm.. basically… they become more “real.”

so why did i go to boston? i went to see these people.

was it worth it? more

than worth it.

best waiter ever, originally uploaded by MissSomething (?).

these are true friends.

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Tags: boston, friends, networking, new media, pcb3, podcamp, seesmic, unconference