My vacation plans started off ordinarily enough, time away from work and visiting with family. In this case, the family is my daughter-in-law and granddaughters up in Washington State. The plan was one week up there, visiting and perhaps drifting up to Seattle for a day or two. Well, things changed!
In my searching around for things to do, I came across some folks that sent me to a link on Jeff Pulver’s next breakfasts. Guess where? Seattle and Vancouver on back to back days! Yeah. We’d thought already about heading into Seattle, Vancouver, or both, so I was excited about this.
As it turned out, Seattle was too hard to make, so we changed plans to make a week day trip to British Columbia and have breakfast the next day. That travel adventure is fodder for another post.
The breakfast was held in down town Vancouver at the Subeez Cafe. Sharon and I arrived about 8:30, and the meet-up portion was already in full swing. There was Jeff, live and in person, elbow deep in schmoozing with the locals. It seems folks from all over the area were interested in this get together.
Minutes after getting there, we were handed our personal social networking tool kits. If you’ve never seen one, then please check out this Facebook video. Jeff explains it all.
Kit in hand, we quickly put on our name tags and gave ourselves tag lines. I labeled myself as a social media gadabout. Sharon chose the oh so true social media widow. This made a great intro for discussions folks had with her. Moments later, someone handed us each some other tags to label ourselves with. Tagging is a big part of these breakfasts.
We spent some moments looking around this rather unique restaurant, but most of the time after our tagging was spent in deep conversations, and there was plenty to talk about. Conversations obviously included social media and networking as topics, but also strayed into all kinds of areas. Sharon ended up talking about our travels, where we’re from and learned plenty about Canada from Ian Hood and Roland Tangloa. These gents made us feel the more like friends than strangers. Of course my wife is like that with folks anyway. Ha.
Everyone was talking and there was a wealth of interesting folks to engage there. Jeff Pulver was going to be my primary target but once I got settled, I found there were others just as interesting. And just so much I couldn’t take it all in. If you get a chance to go, do talk with Jeff, but don’t ignore all the wonderful people like yourself that showed up as well.
Conversation didn’t come to an end even when breakfast arrived. The breakfast was a treat and a nice surprise. Originally this was going to be a continental breakfast. In most places that means bagels, fruit, cereal etc. Not so here.
The Subeez Cafe apparently doesn’t serve breakfast regularly. So for us they whipped special up. Check out this picture.
The first thing to catch my eye was the fresh fruit. Strawberries and apples fresh cut and colorful sat nicely on each plate. This was the first time though I’d had fresh fruit and toast though. Turkey sausage and baked beans nestled nicely with fluffy scrambled eggs between the fruit and toast. To top off the toast, there was a side of peanut butter on each plate. Needless to say, the breakfast drew much of the immediate conversation.
Interesting things besides breakfast included that I’ve been a much busier Twitter user than most in attendance. Most folks there used other social networking tools, though no one had heard of Plurk yet. Facebook seemed popular though, and several folks had full blown websites and blogs. Photography seemed popular as well, with several folks having cameras and video going.
What did I take away from this? What value added did it have in my life? The biggest thing for me was getting face time with folks I’d normally only meet online. In a world where many of us will communicate but never shake hands, this is even more important. Being there in person also allows for more intimate communication, including other forms of personal communication, such as body language and expressions. There’s nothing quite like a real life wink to cement meaning in a message.
Documenting this with words isn’t doing this event justice, so I took some pictures as well. Please check out my pictures of the Vancouver Jeff Pulver breakfast. If you’re on Facebook, be sure to check out the event page. Please feel free to tag the pictures, and leave comments if you know anyone in them.
Now what? Now I start planning on joining Jeff Pulver for breakfast in St. Louis. How about you?
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Tags: BC, breakfast, British Columbia, Jeff Pulver, Social Media, Social Networking, Vancouver
