my i-friends

Today, Meredith Farkas blogged about online disclosure and "friendships". It's nice how she articulates a lot of the feelings I have had, both anxiety and joy, about my online presence and about all the contacts I have made in the past couple of years. In most cases, I am mostly an admirer, and I have been lucky enough to be able to converse, online or otherwise with a few of them. So it still feels to me like a "rock star-groupie" kind of thing. But I have grown fond of many for what they share, what they encourage me to share and for their willingness to help EVERYONE make some headway in their efforts to make their little/big library more open, more transparent and more responsive. These people are real to me, they set an example for me everyday and often I use their eyes to see further. Often I use their words to initiate change.

I did the same thing in flesh and blood 10 years ago when I got involved with the Unicorn User Group International and met system administrators and librarians I found so bright and inventive. I became a fan, then a friend. I would have not become the library geek I am without Selden, Mack, Karen, Jack and countless others. They gave me the confidence to develop my skills, and to become someone others can got to for help and who is involved enough to bring about change in that community. ...The same thing.

On that path, then and now, I got to fall in love with their dogs, meet their parents, eat their food, go to my hometown with them, pray for their babies...
I got to plan a revolution, joke around with them and, oh yeah, sometimes, really cool stuff happened to me too.

-heard from photographer (and Nelson ;) at 7:30 am, posted on flickr at 7:33 am, got it back in Bloglines from TTW at 7:38 am.

This is hot, it made my day.




technorati tags:library-20, library2.0, library 2.0, libraries, i-friends, friends, humans