a deeper connection

With all the digital noise exploding around us, I’m coming to the view that face to face is best.

I’ve been involved in a number of professional – and not-too-professional – get-togethers of people with sometimes disparate views, and I’ve sensed that after all the fabulous technology, all the glitz and jazz of social media – nothing beats eyeballing the person you’re talking to.

So I think the practice of getting together, whether it’s to talk over books, politics, playing the ukelele or swapping ideas, is really coming into its own again. I say again, because I’ve had a decade of the creeping online meeting, sapping the humanity out of work, and forcing us to focus our attention on screens rather than people.

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I’ve just held an event called mindstretch® – it does what it says on the tin and stretches your mind with new ideas, academic research and the de-bunking of myths.  But the event would be simply ‘interesting’ without the interaction, the cut and thrust of a bunch of well, if differently, informed minds, who took time out of the office to be with strangers.

This is also what the FourSpaces event is about.  Almost regardless of the content – and we’ve got some fabulous people speaking – all of that would be just nice without the involvement of the people there. It’s their presence, their engagement, that will make FourSpaces special and hopefully unforgettable and something to be repeated often.

So let’s hear it for the pressing of flesh, the breaking of bread and the rough and tumble of ideas which take flight through others’ presence and input.

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