What channels do you use to connect?

This week was my birthday (According to my 5 year old daughter I turned 14…)

As all of you, I received ton’s of messages on my Facebook wall.

If I look at twitter, I received about half of that on my twitter account. Which is remarkable as I have about 5 times as much “friends” on twitter.

I received 2 google+ messages, which is not surprising as I hardly use that channel.

Yet one of them was one of the nicest message I received. A youtube message from Marcin

I received a (scheduled) digital card from Plaxo. Ah, I get a few plaxo reminders every day. I prefer to send a personal message on the day itself. Looks like I’m not alone.

Another nice surprise was a card (yes a physical card) from the people of 10to1

I have lots of twitter interactions/conversations/chats (can we call that twats from now on?) with both Tom & Koen. Although I think I only met them one or twice, it feels like I know them for a long time, with all these digital interactions.

Receiving the card impressed me. They went all the way to figure out my adress, figure out my birthday and then schedule the card. Nothing extremely difficult, yet a lot of dedication.

I received also 20 Skype chats. Which I all used to connect deeper with the people.

My reply was always along the lines of :
Thank you.
And how is live for you?

With some that resulted in a polite short answer, with others (typically) people in a team I am currently coaching] that ended in an interesting conversation.

In the company I was today I brought pastries . And put them on the
desk next to me. That resulted in some interesting and even very personal talks.
A college remarked that this was better then the usual candy, as with candy people take a one and leave, with patries, they say hi.

This time, at least 3 problems were solved quicker because of that. Well worth buying the pastries.

The most personal  chat I had with  my mother congratulating me by -big surprise-, by phone .

This all reminded me of what my friend Jim Mccarthy said at ALE2012: “You agile people have it all wrong about the need of F2F.” He added: “you are right that we need large bandwidth communication. You are right that so far the best know way is F2F. Yet I’m convinced it’s not the only way.”(he of course said that with much smarter words, then what I remember.)

Yes, I feel very connected to many people that send me a message, even if some live halve a planet away. Twitter, FB, YouTube, Instagram, Foursquare, tell me so much more then what I heard from my friends in the pub. Combine that with the debt of Checkin

For me in the future the companies that use this kind of open communication best, will have it easier to scale beyond the normal team boundaries.

What channels do you use to connect?

PS And while I was writing this article I received this HB video . This was a great message, because in the last conversation I had with Leen, I had mentioned vegetables. So she linked my birthday with vegetables and hup a video that reminded me of our conversation. That’s how deeper connections happen.