Ruler express 1.0

When I was in elementary school I had an exceptional group of over-imaginative friends. In order to communicate while in class, one of this group of gals decided to invent the ruler express to pass notes between each other. The purpose? Half entertainment, one quarter boredom, and one quarter communication.

The ruler express was literally bits of plastic ruler broken up to which we would affix a little piece of paper. It didn't really matter the content of the note, what mattered was the act of getting the message through. We'd throw these babies across rooms, slide them into books and slyly look the other direction as the ruler express vehicles traveled the room.

We were seldom caught and to this day I wish I had a piece of those well worn little bits of joy.

Now here in 2009, I've been working pretty hard at learning the new communication tools since November. Mainly because I think as the walls of traditional media morph, the new social media will become as important as the print pieces, the tv interviews and the radio features. So, my twitter experiments have led me to spend time this weekend at Podcamp with a bevy of micro-bloggers in Toronto. If I were writing this on twitter I'd have to use a hashtag (#pcto09) to identify this line of thought, but since it's just on my blog, I can freely spew my mind instead.

My approach to twitter has been like learning a language. You need to learn the street speak to survive in this world - basic tools that have come in handy include learning to shorten links via a service like TINY URL, signing up for a BLIP.FM account so you can promote the songs you love to your friends, and referencing your new twitter followers (yes, it is the new cult of the webworld) by using @yournamehere and preserving the overwhelming opinion of the general twittership that this is not a stupid medium that is a waste of time, it is of use, it is a new way to weave a web, connect to friends of friends.

I've been converted this week mainly because I've been able, via the people I met this weekend at Podcamp TO, to run my fingers in a new virtual stream of conversation. You see, prior to this weekend, I was mainly connected to my friends who were of the Canadian Music Industry. Unfortunately, for all they know about the music industry, they don't know exactly the depth of interest that is out there for twitter. And people like @sarahprevette who runs the TO twestival and her gang of overwhelmingly overconnected friends and colleague have in three days, let me look through their perpective.

I'll give you some examples. When you're trying to connect with a new community of any kind, one of the first things you need to do is establish trust. By signing up for Podcamp - a free unconference led by people who are mutually interested in sharing information on social media - I was immediately trustworthy. So as I established trust, I found others who were already readily involved in the twittersphere - those who were already addicted (and I'm not kidding here) to the huge information feeds that can be filtered and accessed via tweetdeck technology. And just by showing up to a free lunch (and with no backup I might add) I was allowed to befriend and learn.

I'm currently self-employed and needing to find ways to simplify the tools needed to run a business and spend the maximum amount of time on the actual work, rather than the tedium of invoices and expenses. Thanks to my new friends I've learned about MOO.com where I can get business cards, I met the folks from the innovative invoice site FRESHBOOKS, and have accessed a whole new school of thought of how people really can communicate.

Anyway, just some stream of consciousness about all this communicating. It's a little terrifying to learn so much so fast, but hopefully in the end it will be fruitful and not just a fucking waste of time that takes away from your real world people friends (let's not call the real people followers, shall we?)

We shall see. Twitter is still on trial but so far, I'm quite convinced. This could be the new ruler express? Perhaps.