I am feeling fortunate to know the people I know

Serendipity is a propensity for making fortuitous discoveries while looking for something unrelated. It is a term I am sure was used at school, but first registered with me around 20 years ago when Nick Negroponte, founder of MIT's Media Lab, spoke in London. He was then talk about how delivering news via the technology that was then available was a challenge when compared with printed newspapers. His main theme was that emphasis, poistioning, context and other layout elements conveyed huges amounts of information to a reader almost instaneously, but was missing from tabular, early WWW and hypertext standards.

What he also said was that many readers of printed copy found huge value in serendipity, coming across things they were not looking for, but valued once found. His contenton was that by definition seredipity is hard to code into a technology

In the context of this blog the key is seredipity still abounds in the world of human interaction and as I have become involved in more and more networks I realise how many interesting people you can meet if you just accept a selection of the invitations that drop into your inbox.

Over the last couple of years I have met more than 20 people whose company I have enjoyed and who I have kept in touch with. These are people I would not have met in my normal business and home life and ten years ago would not have had the chance meeting.

I have found even greater satisfaction putting some of those interesting people together and finding that they get on too. The conversations have been wide-ranging and often very unpredictable, but better for it.

I had thought about listing and linking a few here, but then if I forget someone I may cause offence. Instead I hope that those concerned know who they are and recognise themselves and I will look to broker more interesting contacts and conversations.

For now I will just reflect and recognise how lucky I am to have those people in my life and making it interesting.

For that I send a big "Thank you!"