Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 9 seconds

What Counts for #et4buddy w @rjhogue?

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 9 seconds

Been thinking all day of a post that works for both rhizo15 and et4buddy and i got inspired by browsing around the recent stuff going on at rhizo15. Been thinking of how to show my colleagues at work “evidence” of my learning in the past few days, and here is what i came up with

The #et4buddy has 15 videos (playlist at http://tinyurl.com/et4buddy) with around 30 unique people over God knows a total how many hours. But that’s not what counts.

If I had to count something, it would be the buzz this pilot created at the conference, so the number of people who started asking, genuinely, “can we try something similar at our next conference?” and “why don’t we do this more often?”

There were only about 5 people who ever joined virtually (more watched live or recorded), and that’s a low number given the 350 virtual people registered (i assume many are group registrations and not all watching live). But if i had to count something about the actual hangouts themselves, I would count the number of times we laughed.

I gained around 50 new followers on Twitter over the course of et4online, but if I had to count something, I would count the number of tweets sent out during the et4buddy and my own talks that touched my heart. And I would count the number of relationships that were deepened by the interactions via et4buddy, and the number of people on the ground who got closer to each other because of this cool new experience we were all a part of.

Becky and I were pretty close beforehand. We sent each other gifts. We wore those gifts (scarves in this case) on both sides of the camera. I could count those gifts, the number of times, the cost. But you now what really counts? That after 4 days of intensive video with Rebecca, I thought she might wake up today and want a break from me (she and the whole world, actually – i sang her this song before i slept last night). Do you know what happened instead? She woke up and sent me a private message on facebook “good morning” and shortly after, she and Whitney Kilgore asked me to hangout with them (she’d earlier tweeted that she missed me which was soooo touching). No, really. I actually took me a while to realize that’s what they were asking! We didn’t record the hangout this time, because it was with our kids n stuff (this was by Whitney’s daughter to mine). But here’s the thing. A conference ends and there is an anti-climax usually. Instead, the conference ended, and our relationships are so much deeper and we have a way to not have to miss each other. We’re thinking, what next, and how can we do more together and how can we stay in touch. Our relationships have gone farther. And that’s what counts.

Oh, tear jerker and all 🙂

If you watched or participated in #et4buddy, we’re “counting” on you giving us feedback, some of which we will count. Here’s the survey (we forgot to ask ppl to rate how much fun it was on a scale hahaha)

Rebecca Storified the whole thing, so I am just embedding it all here:

<div class=”storify”><iframe src=”//storify.com/rjhogue/et4buddy-with-rjhogue-and-bali-maha/embed?header=false&border=false” width=”100%” height=”750″ frameborder=”no” allowtransparency=”true”></iframe><script src=”//storify.com/rjhogue/et4buddy-with-rjhogue-and-bali-maha.js?header=false&border=false“></script><noscript>[<a href=”//storify.com/rjhogue/et4buddy-with-rjhogue-and-bali-maha” target=”_blank”>View the story “#et4Buddy with @rjhogue and @bali_maha” on Storify</a>]</noscript></div>

3 thoughts on “What Counts for #et4buddy w @rjhogue?

  1. What a touching post.

    The relationships that we developed over the last several days at #et4online will be with us a long, long time. It was a wonderful experience that will not be forgotten. My thinking was challenged in a variety of ways that had a significant impact on what I do in the future.

    Thank you Maha for a friendship forged in an alliance over asynchronous communication. It is ironic that asynchronous communication did not allow us to become as close as we are now after several days of synchronous conversations.

    HUGS,
    Whitney

    1. Hi Whitney, yes, how ironic 🙂 it’s worth exploring, don’t you think? Thank you for your warmth and caring and general “sunny”ness 🙂 both in text and in person 🙂 hugs

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.