Breakfast with Jeff Pulver (Vancouver, January 11th 2009)

Under normal circumstances, unless I have a volleyball game or have to go to church, I rarely wake up earlier than 11 am on a Sunday morning. I am NOT a morning person. So, despite having had VERY little sleep the previous night, I knew I couldn’t miss the Breakfast with Jeff Pulver in Vancouver.

Jeff Pulver. Credit: John Biehler (Flickr)

Jeff Pulver is a wonderful individual, with a passion to connect people that I have only very rarely seen in my lifetime. His “Real Time Social Tagging” exercises are a fantastic way to network and establish connections with people. Since being social and creating friendships is almost second-nature to me, I immediately connected with Jeff’s idea. My tag for this breakfast was “Raul – I use social media for fun and to create friendships”

Credit: John Biehler on Flickr.

It is true. Social media is my playground, not my day-to-day job. I am flattered by the people who have asked me to work with them on some social media contracts but as I have explicitly told them, I’m NOT a specialist in social media. My field of research is environmental policy (more explicitly, wastewater governance, urban sustainability and environmental groups mobilization). I teach public policy too, but it looks like in the future, I might get more into the intersection of social media and sustainability (workshops, talks and projects).

Although we missed many people who would have wanted to attend, the energy that transpired in the room (we had brunch at Enigma, a place I hadn’t visited since well, my days of graduate student) was simply phenomenal. I had the opportunity to meet new people, reconnect with my friends, and a personal goal of mine – meet Jeff Pulver in person. I am in awe of his energy, his passion and his sincerity. He is such a great man. Thank you Jeff for making this possible and for giving of yourself in such a caring and positive way.

You can read my tag cloud thanks to my friend John Biehler (who also has already written his own recap) – I am very happy and flattered by all the positive tags I received. You, my dear readers, the people who love me and whom I love, and my wonderful social media/PR/tech friends, complete me.

Related posts:

1. Vancouver Bloggers Meetup and Social Media Club Vancouver Event March 18th
2. Towards Zero Waste – Metro Vancouver Sustainability Breakfast Nov 4th
3. International Paralympic Day (July 11th, 2009)
4. Reflect on who you are and where you are going
5. Third Tuesday Liveblog – Jeff Young on intellectual property and Web 2.0