Turning virtual friendships into real ones

I was in Brussels for the last two days, and very nice it was too. On Wednesday I was speaking at an event on the use of social media in a European context, called Butterfly Europe. A video of the event is online, and Europasionaria has written about it. I have a slightly different take on it to her, because although I am a card-carrying EU GirlGeek, my geographical position means that I have connected with these people via Twitter, blogs and so on but I’ve never met some of them. So my trip to Brussels was a great opportunity to get to know them in real life. And what a pleasure it was! From the EU Girl Geeks for lunch that day, to the many people at the Butterfly Europe event, to the commission’s internal Geek network on Thursday morning, I had a lovely time taking my online personal relationships offline. It’s too easy to caricaturise people who use digital media as lonely geeks sat behind their keyboards in their underpants, but speaking for myself, it has introduced me to a huge range of interesting people, some of whom I’m proud to call my friends.

Update, midday 20 August

Toute L’Europe [FR] and Les Euros du Village[FR] have also covered the Butterfly Europe Event

Published by Antonia

I'm a British citizen and European Union offical, who lives in Brussels again after 6 years in London and 8 in Melbourne. I went to the London School of Economics and University of Melbourne. In 2008 I took part in the Eisenhower Fellowship Multination Programme, the subject of 3 of my blogs. You can find me on Twitter as @antoniam or on Mastodon as @antoniam@mastodon.scot

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