Jason Falls at SocialIRL in Wichita

Monday night I went to Wichita for a social media event. Jason Falls, one of the thought leaders in social media, was speaking. It was an event put on by SocialIRL - for those of you not into the social media world, that means Social In Real Life. Ben does a fabulous job with all the SocialIRL events, so if you get a chance to go to one, do. You won't be disappointed.

"Social Media" is a blanket term given to the entire class of services like Facebook and Twitter where people connect. I was thinking last night how cool it is that I've gotten to know a number of the people who were there just through social media. It's kind of interesting, really. How we meet people and how we maintain relationships has definitely changed. (My Facebook and Twitter links are below - connect with me!)

The IRL part is one of my favorite things. I like making connections, and love it that things like Facebook keep me connected to people I don't see daily, as well as introduce me to other people I have things in common with that I may not have met in person yet. When you see you have 30 mutual friends, you know you will probably connect.

My friend, Kris, is a great connector. She will just say, "You two need to know each other." I love that. I try to do the same for people, and I love it when someone does it for me.

For years, we've always taken what we call a "cute girl pic" whenever we're together. We haven't seen each other in awhile, so we were behind. We took this one Monday, and got another Tuesday at a different event. We needed to catch up.



The funny part of this photo was that we realized we wanted to take it and I started pulling my camera out. I glanced around to see who was near the take the photo and before I barely had the camera out of my bag, Kris said, "Well, we have two photographers right here." I handed the camera to Cort, who was the closest, and after he got over the shock of holding a little $200 camera he graciously obliged. Professional cameras are so much more sophisticated, and make such beautiful pictures, but I'm just not motivated enough to carry all that around. Regardless, I appreciated him sharing his talent.

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