Just some of the things that wouldn’t have happened to me without social media
- Getting to explain to Marcus Buckingham why I used to have a picture of him in my wallet
- Getting to ask Dan Pink if I could move in with him
- Getting to interact with Tom Peters about change management and project planning (he’s not a fan)
- Interacting with the producer of the first Muppet Movie
- Getting to speak in the British Embassy in Berlin – and having to endure 5 security checks in 36 hours
- Being given tours of Disney, Innocent, Facebook and more
- Getting to chat to the makers of Magic Whiteboard (I love that stuff) about their next product
- Having a picture go viral (so that my wife spotted it and said ‘isnt’ that your handwriting’ – see below)
- Having people greet me as ‘dds180!’
- Getting to meet David Pearl and coordinating 50 people on a Street Wisdom session around London
- Lots of jokes about how ‘I don’t look like the elephant in my avatar’
- Getting to present to a group of Russian HRDs in the bowels of a hotel in Knightsbridge (with a translator scowling at me)
- Getting to work with great folks (you know who you are) – including running a session in the debating chamber of the Cambridge Union in conjuction with Judge Business School
- Discovering just how ubiquitous the love of pie is
- Matthew Horne from Gavin and Stacey appearing to call me ‘f–king rank’ on twitter and then correcting himself – and copying me into a complaint about hot dogs to Jamie Oliver
- Getting into a chat with Simon Blackwell (writer of The Thick of It)
- A bad joke about Van Gogh being retweeted by the National Galley
- A post about a goose (that was a lie) getting me my first ‘you are trending’ notification. It still pops up now
- Getting to see Olivia Munn (who I’m not so secretly in love with) with Sukh Pabial
- Getting to listen to F.W. de Klerk talking about the change in South Africa
- Sally Gunnell retweeting one of my blogs and connecting on LinkedIn
- Getting referred to as a guru by people that have never met me
- Attending a Dr Who event at the BFI and being scared and then a little bit enthralled
- Free booze, cinema tickets and gifts
- Getting repeatedly slapped by Neil Morrison on Twitter, meeting him prepared for a scrap and then enjoying his company (and lots of wine) for several hours
- A note on LinkedIn from someone based in the US (who I’d never met) saying I had been the reason they were able to make a really tough decision
- Making some genuine friends and people I respect
- Pretending I was giving the CIPD keynote by hopping up on stage – and having my LinkedIn profile picture (for some time…) a picture taken by HRGem of me presenting to an empty room
Remember…
