heidi go seek

I haven't written much about my Toronto trip yet, mostly because I was still trying to form exactly what I wanted to say. I honestly still don't know, but I will tell you it was a fun and unique experience. But where do I start?

One thing I did know is I wanted to dig back to an old blog post I wrote a little over a year ago, about an experience I had using Plazes in Ann Arbor, and the first time I ever went to a2b3. I'll get to that blog post later though.

We had been planning this Toronto trip for some time, Alex received an email from somebody at University of Toronto asking him if he would be interested exploring the idea of going to his lab for a postdoc. This was a bit unexpected because up until then he was only considering a few labs in Germany. It was also a good thing because this lab is doing some of the best research in his field. Of course I wanted to come along, if there's a possibility that I'm going to pick up and move to another country, I at least want to know what it's like.

This story really starts a few days before the trip. My head has been all over the place since school started and I was in Vegas for a few days at the beginning of January too. I only had a few days between Vegas and Toronto but thought it best of me to start narrowing down a research topic for my classes. I decided on doing something with social networking, not sure what exactly, but I knew it would be something that kept my interest. Trying to start to narrow down a focus I decided to contact my friend, Andy Piper, who also has some interest in this area and always seems to point me in the direction of great articles. I should also add that I've never met Andy in person and we pretty much only met each other through social networking. Was that because of Plazes too, I actually can't remember? Oh the parallels and the ironies!

Andy more than came through, of course. Well I still don't have a completely narrowed topic, but I'm getting close! I have to be getting close because my research statement is due on Thursday (yikes)! He gave me plenty of information, and even the names of some great people to follow. It's really about the people anyway, right?

The Friday before my trip Andy gave me one more name, Sacha Chua, I went to her blog and liked her right away. I saw this post immediately and I could totally relate. Then I noticed she lived in Toronto. I don't know why, maybe because I was going there in a few days, but I felt the world kind of shrink to half its original size. Andy did send an introduction through email and I think by Sunday (the night I arrived in Toronto), Sacha and I were planning to meet!

Sacha and I met for lunch on Tuesday and given that I had pretty much used my free time in Toronto to do homework, it was a very pleasant and welcomed meeting. We talked about social networking (of course), blogs, wikis, and stories. Sacha enjoys writing, and as somebody where writing doesn't come very naturally, her enthusiasm was a bit inspiring. I also got a very long list of book suggestions from her; hopefully I have time to read all of them! My favorite part of the lunch was her story of how she got hired at IBM. She said next time we meet I'll have to tell her the story of how Alex and I met, but that's a pretty boring story. Instead I offered up my wedding story, that one is five times more interesting.

So this brings me back to my old blog post from long ago, simply called Plazes Experience. It's another example of how social networking shapes our experiences, this one happened much more locally though. I had to look it up because I remember calling that experience something, but I couldn't remember exactly what that was. I knew it was something similar to serendipity or spontaneity, or was it both? The words were still in my head when I read this tweet from Andy. I was wondering what Andy was doing in my head!

I just looked it up earlier this evening; it's about 'planned spontaneity'. That was how I described it anyway, read the comments of the post and you'll see that Ed Vielmetti described it as 'manufactured serendipity'. I think both of those apply (I personally prefer Ed's version though). There was one paragraph in that post that I really liked and applies here again:

I was really interested in the planned spontaneity of the whole thing though. The fact that I was in the right place at the right time, and with the right tools I was able to have the experience. It is another testimonial to how technology doesn't just shape our online lives anymore, it is also giving us richer experiences offline too.

And that may have been the first time I have ever quoted myself in a blog post. To round out the whole situation, I decided to go to a2b3 on Thursday. I hadn't been in a long time with my class always being on Thursdays but I'm glad I did. It was a great lunch and I even gained a new LinkedIn contact. The fun never ends!

And the Toronto verdict is that we are indeed moving there. Alex is accepting the position at University of Toronto. I'm really happy about this too. I certainly would've loved to move to Germany, but at least in Toronto I'm still able to drive home and visit my family on occasion. It's a wonderful city too. We're not moving too soon, it'll still be over a year yet, but it is something new and exciting to look forward to.

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