The Next Step

I’m stealing a title from a recent movie because its a good play on my experiences this past weekend at EdubloggerCon, NECC2008, and NECC Unplugged.

For the past year-and-a-half I’ve been meeting, collaborating, sharing and learning with people in a variety of online personal learning networks (PLN).  I turn to them when I need some help.  I turn to them when I have research to share.  I turn to them when I need advice or a recommendation.  I turn to them when I want to discuss personal achievements.

I’ve learned a lot about a few people, and a little about a lot of people over that time.  Even if I have never had a discussion outside of following someone’s updates on Twitter, there is an interesting connection.  It’s hard to understand but many people that I talked to this week described similar feelings about their “friends.”

I had never knowingly met anyone from my online networks before EBC this weekend.  But what’s really interesting is that didn’t matter.  In fact, it even enhanced the conferences.

When we met face-to-face for the first time it was like we had known each other for years, even if we had just met on the NECC Ning the week before.  All those walls that people throw up when they are in a social situation in which they don’t know anybody were completely torn down.  Conversations were instant, passionate, and left off right from our online discussions or posts or thread or comments.

Everyday my belief in PLN’s is reinforced and this weekend/week proved the most powerful of all reasons for having online social networks.  Even if I never meet the people I learn from, and that learn from me, we still have something important online.  However, there is just something really special about the experience of meeting those nodes from my network that strictly online connections can’t ever quite equal.

flickr user: Kasia/flickr