Connecting dots at Etech

Am absolutely delighted to be heading out today to San Diego for O’Reilly’s Emerging Technologies conference and expect the usual great human connections to be made, conversations held and dots connected.

It’s taken me a lot of years (look closely and you’ll see gray hair in my photo), a “bet on myself” leap of faith as an Internet-as-a-platform/Web 2.0 management consultant, two strong executive-level guides (Entrevis) and a smart and supportive circle of family and friends to bring me to this place where I’m completely clear on my skills, strengths and what puts a spring-in-my-step.

One of the many things that I’ve come to be enlightened about on my journey is the sheer delight and highly effective ideation and brainstorming that occurs when I get together with people who already get it (most…if not all…of the people at this conference). There is an energy, an excitement and a shorthand that happens. A leaping forward in thought exploration that occurs when I’m surrounded by people more knowledgeable than I am or are in-the-game building stuff, creating standards or trying to persuade others to move in some direction…and we don’t have to start off talking about the basics!

I used to be hard on myself that I’d be at these conferences absorbing, connecting with others, thinking exploratory thoughts and not be heads-down typing away blogging about a session or some technology I just saw. No more.

My experiences over the last few years — as I’ve been essentially journaling about all the “dots” I see while swimming in a river of information and change — has taught me one thing: the only way to connect the dots is to take it all in and then gain perspective. The only way to gain perspective is to let it sink in, think about it, wonder, take my mind off of it, do something completely different, and connections I least expect sometimes get made without my conscious interference. Sometimes I have to work at it pretty hard though.

Blogging may-or-may-not be light this week. Hopefully my posts will be all about perspective and not just some cool happenin’ that occurs.