Tuesday night was dinner and a movie (a pre-release screening of Juno) with John Dodds. John is a blogger so I get to tell you about it (although he won’t let me publish his picture – I asked).
Wednesday morning Benjamin Ellis treated Liz and me to brilliant conversation and breakfast.
All week I’ve met interesting and intelligent people from businesses with which I work, have worked, would like to work, or simply admire.
But, the etiquette is different.
No one has ever told me, but I know:
It is good form to publish references to bloggers that you meet and mostly bad form to do the same with professional colleagues or business associates.
It makes sense. They’re different groups with different needs and expectations.
What’s the point?
If you’re like me, you may find yourself participating in many communities in varying ways and at various levels of involvement.
In order to respect these connections, we need to know where we are, who we’re with, and how we should behave.
We must always be ourselves, but there are shades of intensity, degrees of transparency, and wholly different topics of conversation that become relevant depending upon where we are.
While we have decided to cross the lines and participate in many communities, the members of those communities may not feel the same way.
We’ll only be welcome as long as we remain sensitive to that.
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