I never cease to be amazed by the Internet.
I haven't posted anything for the past couple of days for several reasons, but one is that Buzz Bruggeman came to town. I didn't know Buzz at all before last October. Now, he is one of my best friends, and one of the people with whom I most enjoy spending time. And this is all because I decided to download a program that I read about on a legal bulletin board discussion group.
Downloading that program (ActiveWords) cause Buzz to shoot me an E-mail pointing out that he was a fellow lawyer and would be happy to talk to me about how to use the program to be more efficient. That sounded like a good thing to do, so I called him. We wound up having a half hour conversation, talking about all kinds of things--mostly tech-related. I don't think we spent more than 5 minutes talking about the program. But we had a good conversation and realized there was a good connection. We both love software, and cool tech stuff, and the power of the internet. But, more than that, we like people and we like the power that computers have to help people do their jobs and other stuff.
At the end of that first conversation, back in early October, Buzz invited me to PopTech. I had no idea what that was, and it sounded cool, but I didn't go. Still, I was tempted to go because I wanted to meet Buzz in person. About a month later I did finally get to meet Buzz in person when the Legal Tech Show was in New Orleans. We went to dinner one night at a small seafood restaurant out by Lake Ponchatrain. We talked for a long time, and I knew then that it would be (to quote from CasaBlanca) the start of a beautiful friendship. And, now after spending two days with him, I even more convinced of that.
Through Buzz, I have learned about Radio, and Web-logging. And that's just small part of it. More importantly, I have learned that there are people out there who do things because they love doing them, and while they want to make money, that isn't the primary thing. Well, to be fair to my other friends, I already knew that from them. But, I guess what I found out is that you can meet some other really good people in seemingly serendipitous ways just by doing something simple like downloading an 8 Mg piece of software that you think you're only going to try for 30 days. But instead you find a true friend that you would like to know for 30 years.....
