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June 10, 2008

Tag, I’m It!

As a kid I played my share of Tag (the game).. I never expected that in 2008 I would be traveling to various cities around the world to play tag with random people during breakfast events that I would be hosting.

On the Internet, I started playing the game of Tag back in December, 2006 when I introduced my own variation of “Blog-Tag.” If you are a blogger and have not played Blog-Tag yet, I suggest starting your own game and giving it a try.

Another variation of “Tag” is being played at each of the breakfasts I have been hosting around the world. To date I have hosted breakfasts in: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Princeton NJ, Providence RI, San Jose, San Francisco, Tel Aviv, Toronto, and Washington, DC. In some cases I’ve hosted breakfasts in some of these cities multiple times. This week I’m adding: Seattle and Vancouver to the list. I am currently working on scheduling more breakfasts. Please feel free to suggest a city for me to host a future breakfast in.

During my breakfast journey I have met some pretty amazing people and I have had an unique opportunity to get to meet some of the people who I only used to know as online friends.

To date, I have rarely directly invited anyone to any of these breakfasts, yet the events I have hosted have attracted anywhere from 5 to 150 people people. All I generally do is create an event on Facebook and the event gets promoted it in my Facebook Newsfeed. This is one of the benefits of having 5,000 friends on Facebook. When friends discover the event, they add themselves to the event. And then some of these people then either share the event or take the liberty to invite some of their friends to the event.

Overall, besides having a chance to meet some of the people who represent my social graph, my focus has been on re-engineering the Business Networking Breakfast. Since hosting my first breakfast in Boston in November, 2007, I have been exploring ways of applying social tagging to face-to-face meetings.

What I have discovered is that “Real-Time Social Tagging” is something that works well in helping people start a conversation and in getting to know each other. Some of the tags that have appeared in my guests “Personal Tag Clouds” have ben pretty revealing / reflective of their personalities and passions. How often does someone get a chance to see how their messages are understood and processed by the people they are meeting?

(my personal tag cloud from one of my Boston breakfasts)

Some of the fun I have at these breakfasts is taking pictures during breakfast and uploading them to Facebook and knowing that within minutes of being uploaded, people who attended the breakfast will take the time to tag each of the guests on Facebook. I’ve also enjoyed sharing some of these breakfasts LIVE using both Qik and BlogTV.

Each breakfast continues to be a learning experience for me. I remain fascinated at how some on-line social media technologies can be used in a face-to-face setting to redefine personal business networking. I’ve learned a lot hosting these events. And looking back at these breakfasts, each event stands out on it’s own even if the temptation would be to blur them all together. No matter how many time I host a breakfast, I continue to enjoy watching how my guests react to the “Real-time Social Tagging” that take place at each event and the conversations that take place as a result of it.

The more time I spend hosting these breakfasts and take in what is actually happening at these events, the better the chance I have in improving the experience for everyone involved. I hope you consider attending one of my future breakfasts.

Upcoming breakfasts: June 2008

- June 11th - Seattle
- June 12th - Vancouver
- June 24th - NYC
(more breakfasts will be announced in the near future)

If you would like to RSVP for any of these breakfasts but are not on Facebook, please send me an email.

To better understand the dynamics of “Real-Time Social Tagging”, please see Tom Eveslin’s recent blog post: Third Life: Social Networking Breakfast with Jeff Pulver and David Kirkpatrick’s story in Fortune: Geography, social media and breakfast.

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Meet three 8th graders who enjoy “Real-Time Social Tagging:”


Readers of my blog are invited to join me on both twitter and Facebook.

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Posted by jeff on June 10, 2008 01:37 PM | Permalink

Additional resources: Watch PrimeTime TV Shows | Watch the Jeff Pulver Show | Jeff's Qik Videos

Comments

The Pulver breakfasts have to be experienced face-to-face to truly be appreciated and enjoyed. (I've watched a few of them live on qik--fun, but not the same as being there.) You know I'm a fan, and I think that one way or another I'll make it to a third breakfast somewhere along the way.

:o)

Posted by: AnnOhio at June 10, 2008 02:48 PM

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