Don't assume

In my work, I am online a lot. I use Twitter, read interesting or just funny articles that people I follow suggest and visit a variety of Blogs and communities. The people I work with almost all are familiar with the same social media. When you are constantly working in such an atmosphere, you tend to think that also 'all' other people are familiar with it.

However, when talking to several people in my organization (for example during our X-mas party), you see that this is not the case (except perhaps a site like LinkedIn which does not require that much interaction yet). A lot of people in their daily live do not use these social media (yet). Of course the 'younger' generation is growing up with being online, having a personal profile in one or more communities and are willing to try new sites / communities, but the 'older' generation (and that is perhaps from the age of 30 and up) is not that familiar with it and need to see the benefits of it. As mentioned in 'You can't stop it anyway' once people experience the interaction and the benefits, they will be more active themselves and probably advise it to their peers also to become more active.

But they first need to be convinced that they can benefit from it, encouraged to spend time on it and not just be a passive visitor.

So don't assume that everyone knows what you're talking about when you talk about cloud computing, twitter and other social media.

It's a small world

Yesterday, I went to a birthday dinner party of a friend at de Waaghals in Amsterdam. There were 14 women from all kind of disciplines. The funny thing was that people that did not know each other (as a friend) did have 'connections' to other people at the party. Just by talking to each other, you find similar interests, similar journeys, similar employers, similar people you know.
What also was remarkable (or perhaps not ;-) because there were 14 women) was that almost everyone knew about the topics that were discussed (tv programms, scientific research, day-to-day practice).
Also some quotes passed here are two favorites.

First one: Don't panic, nothing is under control.

Second one: Do what you think is best, not what is expected of you.