There’s something rather exceptionally marvelous about being a Microsoft Yammer MVP among this current group of Yammer MVPs.

I’m not actually talking about the award itself, though this additional shared aspect helped bring us even closer together.

I’m talking about what happens when your main mode of connection with a group of people is online, and you bring it offline.

I’m talking about what happens when it works.

This represents streamlining

This year, all of us have a chance to nominate ourselves and others to actively participate in a number of ways at the Microsoft Ignite conference in September.

Naturally, we started discussing this on Yammer.

Streams of conversations and private messages flew back and forth. Awesome folks from Microsoft graciously allowed themselves to be dragged in to some of these conversations.

Then one of us had the bright idea to just have us all talk to each other! After all, we’d managed to do this once before, despite our different time zones and schedules.

And it was brilliant. We pooled our ideas, organized our approach, and perhaps most importantly, laughed. I truly enjoy their company and am glad they enjoy mine.

So yes. There’s something magical about meeting people online, getting to know them, getting to like them, and then being able to interact with them offline so well–and still like them!