Microsoft MVP: I Have Found My Peoples

Incidentally, I’ve dropped the “Day #” for these particular posts because the mere thought of continuing the tally instantly sapped my energy.

Didn’t notice it was gone? Well…good! …Yeah!

And since I’m being all confessional here, I did find my Yammer peoples before becoming a Microsoft MVP, so this post isn’t exactly about that.

This is about what happens when you bring online connections offline.

Boy, was he ever surprised. From 6iee.com.

See, we newly-designated Yammer Microsoft MVPs had mostly just known each other online. A few of us met at Ignite or before, a couple of us have actually worked together, and so forth.

But overall, our biggest thing in common was this enterprise social network.

It makes sense. Yammer is where we met, Yammer is where we had our shared experiences, Yammer is where we talked the most.

And Yammer is global, so it didn’t matter where we sat down to do it.

But with this new year and new designation, we started thinking more and more that we needed to step out into the stratosphere just a bit.

So we had an hour-long conference call. And was it ever fun.

Don’t leave me haaaannning on the telephone. From flickriver.com.

We had a huge agenda (got through three items!) and made concrete decisions as well, as well as establish some hopes and expectations.

But what really happened more than anything was this: We cemented our bond.

I’m not saying we wouldn’t be as fine and cemented if we never had a real-life call, or never were able to meet all of each other in person.

Yet even as this is my day job, one thing I will always say about social media is this:

Social media is meant to enhance, not replace.

To carry on your conversation when you can’t see or speak to each other otherwise.

To keep your connections strong when office hours are done and the lights are off.

To keep it real.

She keeps it real. From sodahead.com.

So because social was first for so many of us, we really felt the need to balance it out a bit with a more “real life” connectivity.

That and we had so much to talk about that our fingers were wearing out.

When we got on that conference call, some magically-working alchemy came into play, and I believe that by the end, all of us felt even more “cemented.” And more—a pretty substantial bond.

Thank you to my fellow Yammer MVPs for being so awesome.