Accidentally on Purpose Blog

Well today is my birthday and I thought I’d use it as a test bed of sorts for things 2.0.  Interesting phenomenon birthdays.   Here’s an interesting link to a site all about birthday traditions from around the world. Enjoy!

As with all discussions nowadays, I guess its only appropriate to make some sort of comparison against Facebook – It is the competitive benchmark of all things isn’t it?   I’ve used FB to remind me of friends’ birthdays on a number of occasions but, is it really the preferred channel for saying “Happy Birthday”?  Lets look at the numbers:

Q. how many people sent me virtual gifts on Facebook? 

A. 1 (Thanks Robin) 

Q. how many people wrote to me on my Facebook wall to say Happy Birthday? 

A. 1 (Thanks Richard)

Q. how many people sent me Facebook email to say Happy Birthday?  

A. 4 (That was so nice of them wasn’t it?)

Q. how many people sent me a regular email for the occasion? 

A. 20+ 

Q. How many people sent me an e Card

A. 3 (yes folks, people still do this!)

Q. how many people actually called me?  

A. I didn’t really count but it was by far the largest number!   I was on one conference call yesterday where I was ambushed by perhaps a dozen or more well wishers. 

With all the web 2.0 ways with which to communicate — is Facebook the standard?  I guess that depends on your social network. Apparently, its not my network’s standard. Not yet anyway!

So which channel do I prefer?  All of them, of course!  Whether you use Facebook, Outlook or even that old day timer/planner (you know who you are) – make sure you remember to say happy birthday to your friends and acquaintances.   Remember, its not about the technology — it is always about the people. 

BTW, I was worried that the one (most important) person that hadn’t wished me a Happy Birthday yet wouldn’t have before I posted this.  Well, I just lucked out — she called!  (thanks mom!)

Well, I’ve been on a self-imposed blogging hiatus of sorts these past few weeks.  Beginning the last week of August when I spent a week at the beach with my family not thinking of work (well maybe thinking about it — point is, I wasn’t doing any)  

I then traveled to San Francisco for the Office 2.0 conference.  What a great event!  I spent most of my time in the sessions listening to some really bright people and meeting with the likes of  Robin Carey, Shel Israel, Giovanni Rodriguez, Jen McClure and Jeremiah Owyang.  I even had the opportunity to make the acquaintance of Etay Gafni a colleague of mine, that until the O2O conference, I’ve never had the opportunity to meet in person.

Last week I was in Hamburg, Germany for a team offsite where we kind of huddled and figured out what still needs to happen before the end of the year, start the planning process for 2008 in earnest and taking some time to get re-acquainted with one other.  One of the more interesting things we did in Hamburg was to invite a few journalists to attend — we turned the tables on them a bit by asking them the questions (foreshadow alert.)

From left to right: Peter Sayer (Paris Bureau Chief - IDG News Service), Georgina Prodhan (Reuters), Herbert Heitmann (Head of SAP Communications), Matthias Lambrecht (Financial Times Deutschland) and Andy McCue (Silicon.com)

This week I’ll be in NYC for our A1S event.  I’ll remain quiet on that topic for now and let the bloggers we’ve invited share their thoughts on what they hear.   

As you can see there’s a lot going on (and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.) For now I need to be heads down and focus on what it is I have in front of me.  Speaking of what’s in front of me, I almost forgot.  I’m also in the process of redoing this blog.  You might even say that the “accidental” part is about to end and the ”purpose” part is about to begin. 

So, cheers for now from the river Elbe (by way of NYC).