The Sikh Geek

So, how good is your Facebook status message? Is it philosophical, topical, biographical, hypocritical (well, not sure about that last one - it’s just rhymes with the rest). I’m very envious of people who seem to write such mind bendingly clever, witty and rhetorical remarks whereas I’m writing to tell people I’m going for a crap or picking my nose (not really, but you know what I mean). My wife, Ratinder, has discovered that it is a very powerful weapon against me and once wrote that I wouldn’t go for a coffee with her and my sister then saw it and gave me a hard time!

They are also great at starting a conversation and is making me think again about Twitter and micro-blogging again. This exchange by Jim Benson is a great example of this. I just got introduced to Jim by Sue Thomas of De Montfort University via Facebook and was checking out his blog.

Just saw Sue’s status message that she’s off to Redmond as she’s been invited by Microsoft to go talk about her research into Transliteracy and Social Networking. Pretty cool heh? I can’t wait to hear all about it.

On a bit of a digression, Sue introduced me to a concept of learning from people/organisations which are totally at an extreme to what you do (she had some term for it which I can’t remember now). I’ve always had a diverse range of interests which go beyond just techie stuff, so I’m pretty open to this idea. It makes a lot of sense because if you always network within your own peer networks then the sort of information will always be within the bounds of your current knowledge (mostly) but to be really creative perhaps you need to look at ideas/views from people who have a totally different perspective to you, i.e. The Creative Coffee Club.