Connecting online to offline
For these two weeks back home, I’ve scheduled lots of meals (when one is in Singapore, one eats) to catch up with friends. These are typically with Singaporean friends I’ve known since my school days. This is the first time that most of these meals are with people whom I’ve gotten to know in the past year. A couple of you I’ve only met once in person. One of you I have never met in person. We have only had a very long Skype call.
I suppose our circles have evolved. I have taken more introductions since b school and since joining the startup community. The more introductions you take, the more you want to do, the more you receive. A virtuous cycle.
I have been fortunate enough to meet most of you through very good email introductions. The first degree friends who did the introductions knew why we should get to know each other. There is context, there is some kind of essential common ground. There is something valuable that could be exchanged. That something valuable is most often each person’s perspective (on startups, on bondbreaking, on whatever). Not all introductions are created equal. With weaker introductions, that something exchanged is information. With very good introductions, that something exchanged is friendship. In the best cases, a kindred spiritness.
In all these instances, our offline interactions have been enhanced, sustained by our online presences. I think about the friend I am meeting for dinner. We have only met once in person for maybe 10 minutes in a group setting, had one long Skype conversation. But through all our other mutual reading of blogs and tweeting and email exchanges, I feel I know him well enough that I would be glad to use my social capital to recommend him to anyone. (And I also feel close enough to demand that he bring an autographed copy of his new book to dinner!)
I would go so far as to argue that there are meaningful parts of online interactions that cannot be replicated offline. When you read someone’s blog for instance, you get to hear a version of what they sound like to themselves and how they want to be heard by the world.
Emails, long pensive personal emails, achieve a similar effect. I once had a friend call me and he said he wanted to pick up the phone and call because he was tired of how emails felt so impersonal. I thought to myself, no, that’s just because you don’t understand how good emails work. I love a great 2-hour catch up phone call, but don’t dismiss email. A good, thoughtful email gets closer to how that person wants you to know them when they are presenting themselves, edited and uninterrupted. There is communication and then there is communication.
I’m not about to suggest that online interactions are better than offline. Of course not. I do think it’s simplistic to insist that all offline interactions are “better”. I don’t know what “better” means. You can’t build the same connection across different media. But that’s the whole point. A smiley face :) is a poor substitute for how it feels to have someone beam at you in person. But there are tones of a lighthearted Twitter exchange between friends that cannot be replicated in an offline conversation. You cannot speak a URL.
The point, to me, is always the connection.
The internet doesn’t change what we as human beings need to feel connected to each other. It’s just another tool, another medium. Our psychological and emotional needs for connectedness are the same as what they have been for thousands of years. The internet, if you get how to use it, is connection enhancing. The very opposite of isolating.
People who want to connect will find a way to do so meaningfully in any medium. On this trip, I am glad these online interactions can go offline. And I’m sure we’ll pick them back up online. Seamless. It’s wonderful.
