An ongoing conversation

Happy August, everyone! It is fascinating to me to watch the way Twitter is impacting the way we communicate as individuals, as companies, as citizen journalists, as human beings. Everyone seems to be recognizing the value of sharing what you see and know and we are gradually becoming more savvy about identifying the feeds, tweets, and sources we can turn to for reliable information.

But there's a point needs to be made as we post and tweet and link and share: Even though we are giving Twitter credit for changing the way we communicate (and Biz Stone is great so this isn't meant to take anything away from his amazing creation), people are the ones making Twitter work. We are ready to share. We trust what we experience. We have interesting thoughts. We are recognizing the very real and integral way we are connected, can connect, do connect with each other. We see the effects of our ideas and posts, as they radiate outward into the world. We have become part of a truly global and ongoing conversation, which begins with each of us sharing what we see, hear, think, and respond to from our own worldview. This is a wonderful, amazing manifestation of a talent we each inherently have just because we're human beings. We experience and we share that experience, and others benefit--or at least respond. Wonderful!

Twitter is a great, catalyzing tool, to be sure. But in terms of communication, we will do well to remember that the ability, the desire, the vision is really within us. The people down the hall from you would be glad to tell you about a fascinating article they read yesterday. Your managers have much more to share than the latest sales reports or the projections for next quarter. Create a real-time, face-to-face forum for this type of tweeting conversation to occur in your own workplace and watch what happens. We will bring it. It's what we do.

And you just might see a transformation in the way people relate and respond to each other, just because you provided the opportunity. Try it and see! (And then tweet it we we can know how it goes.)

Have a great month! :)