Alec Saunders SquawkBox

My friend Jeff Pulver authored a tasty piece of link-bait this morning in the form of this BusinessWeek piece titled Confessions of a LinkedIn Drop-Out.  It generated some predictable flames, like this guy who claims that Jeff doesn't understand Facebook or LinkedIn.  For me, though, it rings true. 

A couple of observations:

1. Business is social.  In business we have meetings, lunches, dinners, events, strong relationships, weaker relationships, friendships, and rivalries.  We seek relationsips, and we seek to escape relationships. The only thing that's different about business socializing versus personal socialization is the motivation for doing so. 
2. Relationships are always personal.  Regardless of whether we want to do business, hang out, or procreate, relationships are always forged one to one.  The argument that we have separate business and personal personas is bogus.  Long ago I merged my address book into one big unified entity.  It was easier to maintain that way, and more accurately reflected my world.

Like Jeff, I find myself spending more and more time in Facebook, and less on LinkedIn.  The social pleasantries that are the grease which makes business work are absent from LinkedIn, but present in Facebook.  For example, I've met business people who share my interest in diving, my passion for photography, and my love of food and wine through Facebook.  We now have common interests to share when the business conversation runs dry.  When I've updated Facebook status to say that I'm working on a specific problem, I've had numerous emails from people in my network offering solutions. It's the most efficient way I know to find an answer to a question. And when I've needed to contact specific people at specific companies, I've just popped off a Facebook note… no referral required. 

For me, Facebook represents a very direct and very twenty-first century way of doing business. If you need to reach a particular individual, cold call them.  Facebook makes it easy.  By contrast, LinkedIn is an encapsulation of the old-boy's network, and the class system perpetuated by Ivy League colleges.  It's not about doing business, but rather about who you know.  Harsh criticism, perhaps, but it feels accurate to me.

And because Facebook blends social and business together in such an untidy way, it serves my needs incredibly well.  Let's face it — at the age of 43, I've met more people in my life than any college student. And as I get older it's getting harder and harder to remember them all. The challenge of remembering them all is made easy by Facebook because it's all about staying in touch, and doing things with people, rather than just who you know.

So, I'm gradually uploading all of my contacts to Facebook (about a third done now) and inviting everyone I know to join.  It works for me, because at the end of the day, business is social. 

Jeff Pulver started up another game of "blog tag" yesterday in advance of Blog Day 2007, happening August 31.  It's always a good opportunity to mix it up a little, and encourage people to check out some blogs you might not otherwise read.  The rules are simple:

1. List five Blogs that you find interesting and if you can tell, include the city/country where they are from.
2. Identify five Bloggers to tag to join in this game with you. I recommend emailing the bloggers you tag to give them a heads up of you tagging them.
3. Use the tag: BlogDay2007 in your blog post.
4. (Optionally): Contact the owners of the blogs you shared as your "blogs to take a look at."

I'm going to highlight a few Canadians, especially since so many of my blogger friends are from outside of Canada.  So without further ado, here are five interesting Canadian blogs that are a little off the beaten track for readers:

1. Billions with Zero Knowledge, the blog of Montreal Canada entrepreneur Austin Hill.
2. Venture Law Lines, the Toronto Canada blog of lawyer, and former VC, Suzie Dingwall-Williams.
3. My Own Pirate Radio, the St. Catharines Toronto blogger, smart-guy, and ex-Microsoftie Osh Momoh.
4. The Chicken Test, the often whacky musings and videos of Toronto's Bryce Johnson.
5. Wood S Lot.  Perth Ontario native Mark Woods daily collections of (frequently mildly subversive) literature, poetry, essays and photographs. 

And now I'm tagging the following people and asking them to join in: Craig Fitzpatrick, Jim Courtney / Phil Wolff and the rest of the gang at the Skype Journal, Andy Abramson, Matthew Saunders, and Rob Hyndman.  Phil and Andy aren't Canadians… but since Phil is associated with Jim, who is, we'll give him the nod… and Andy… well, anybody who has had the strong association with hockey that Andy has had for many years can be considered an honorary Canadian. 

I've been off the air since August 2nd.  Why the radio silence?  We've had 13 house guests.  As hard as it is to imagine, we crammed 20 people into our house for the long weekend — wined, dined, entertained and did activities with the kids.

We went diving in the St. Lawrence on Saturday, visiting two of the more popular wrecks close by.  The first wreck, the Conestoga, is a shore dive from Cardinal, Ontario. The Conestoga is in 28 feet of water, and full of interesting mechanical stuff — boilers, engines, propellers, chains, and so on.  The second, the Robert Gaskin, is in 70 feet of water.  It's a well preserved wooden boat from the late 1800's.  It requires a boat trip from Brockville which we did with Ottawa's Diver's Wearhouse. Their facilities on the St. Lawrence River are terrific for divers.

Here's the bow end of upper deck of the Gaskin with divers below.  More photos in this Flickr set, if you enjoy diving.

Sunday we spent the day at Parc Omega, a short drive north of Montebello on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River.  Parc Omega is a game park full of mostly native North American game. You can drive around their roads, and view Bison, Wapiti, Moose, and other animals up close.  You can even feed some of them.  And no, the irony of all those cars driving through a wildlife preserve wasn't lost on us…

More Parc Omega photos in this Flickr set.