One of the rabbit holes that I jumped down today led me to this blog post entitled, “The Meeting Never Happens in the Meeting” that talks about the value of the conversations that happen outside the traditional ‘formal’ structure of meetings and how we should really consider how beneficial these sorts of social conversations really are.

The blog posts talks a bit about virtual environments and team collaboration in those spaces but when I first saw the title of the post I immediately thought about twitter and our local Penn State community.

I’m sure that you’re all sick to death of me talking about twitter but I really do feel that this one simple little tool has changed everything for me in a professional development and social sense. At a recent work event, a friend sitting right beside me was someone I’d been chatting with informally on twitter for a few months but had never met in person. There was already a familiarity and conversational ease that existed because of those informal chats via twitter. I’m not saying this is different than the same sorts of meetings that occur online first before meeting in real-life, just that in this instance the tool was twitter.

Now, that being said.. those of you from the Penn State twitter crew know exactly what I’m talking about when I say that I honestly believe that if I weren’t on twitter and connected to the people that I’m connected to in my local community I would not be as effective at my job. I would not have the same knowledge, I would not be involved in the same collaborative projects and I would not have the same personal connections to people that work at other campuses and in other departments. Twitter has changed *everything*.

I also strongly feel that people not involved in these local twitter discussions are missing out on great conversations, personal relationships, and problem-solving discussions that are taking place *only* in this venue. In essence, the meeting is happening outside the meeting. We’re meeting on twitter day in and day out, and we’re having casual informal snippets of conversation that are changing our day-to-day lives. The important stuff is happening on twitter, the formal stuff is happening in the structured face-to-face meetings.

The important stuff is the informal stuff. The off-handed comments about a particular musician that someone hates, the requests for recipes, the mention of a project that someone is working on that then leads to a discussion and collaboration on that same idea, the requests for help or advice from someone trying to decide what purchase would be best, or the sharing of the birth of a child – these are the powerful things. The things that change us as people and as a community. These are the things that feed our spirits and help us work creatively and collaboratively. This is our community. Join the meeting.

Today and tomorrow I’m attending the “Learning Design Summer Camp” at Penn State. We’ll be having discussions about social networking, personalized learning, community and other nifty things.

As my contribution to camp, I’ve written some lyrics to the tune of “Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda” as our summer camp song.

Hello Learning, Hello Teaching
Conversation, without preaching
Class discussion with a new twist
You know that you wish that you could do this

They threw up a .. planning wiki
And the rest of it is LDSC history
Planners filled with much elation
They gave all of us an open invitation

-micala