I penned this post while flying somewhere over New York, Pennsylvania or Ohio on my return from the 140 Characters Conference in NYC in late April. Now that some time has elapsed, I think it’s perfect timing to share the impact the event had on me in the hours immediately after.
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I am now cruising at 36,000 feet somewhere above New York watching a gleaming sun slowly fade into the evening sky. It’s beautiful; the clouds below look like towering snowy mountains – an aerial landscape that will last only for a short time.
This seems a bit like a metaphor for the 140 Characters Conference that I attended over the course of the last two days. It was beautiful, only lasted a short time and has finally come to a close. However, it is far from complete.
If there is one thing that I took away from my experience at #140conf, it is this: the relationships formed will endure long after the closing remarks have been made. At least they should.
There were so many brilliant minds concentrated in one area – people with minds for business and hearts for people. I’ll make the argument that it is the latter more than the former that makes what Jeff Pulver has created such a powerful event.
Many of the speakers and panelists talked about the importance of being authentic and transparent. We hear these words being thrown around so often that I fear they might lose they’re impact, but at the same time, through the interactions I had at the conference, it is apparent that many - if not most - of the attendees embrace these two traits.
What struck me was the diversity of people in attendance and the absolute connectedness of them all as a community. I met with people who run multiple multi-million dollar businesses, people who have spent time in prison, people who have been abused, people who love to talk, some who are so shy they’d like to hide in a corner somewhere (but didn’t!). I met people of many races and places: people from New York, Georgia, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, Texas, and as far away as Israel! But they all came to do one thing: share themselves with each other.
Some people were there to help others, some were there to discover themselves.
The incredible part about all of it is that it was all happening in real-time, enabled by “new” technology.
I came into the #140conf with the idea that there would be a lot of “how to” type presentations, a lot of “look what I did” speeches and quite a bit of focus on emerging technology. While there was certainly some new technology being discussed, it was always about the “why” behind the technology, not about the technology itself or how beautifully architectured it was.
The takeaway: People matter. People care.
And the #140conf participants represented humanity well.
