The Social Space Station

I recently had an international-Internet-real-life-in-my-hood-type-hookup with a chap called Andrew Dubber (an ex-pat New Zealander living and working in Birmingham, UK and a cool guy). He is also a much faster and better blogger than I (although I would argue that I’m a tumblelogger) and has posted about our meeting already on his blog.

I have been following his blog the Wireless (discontinued) for a while then New Music Strategies and occasionally dipping into his personal blog (stalker warning!). I mean three blogs and all of them containing smooth, flowing, well-constructed prose, interesting content and most importantly - short paragraphs.

I enjoy them, particularly New Music Strategies for his keen insights into music online - which I have conveniently linked to over there to the right and down a bit.

His blogging approach is conversational; by this I mean he engages readers in a relaxed and chatty style where he attempts to disrupt the 1-to-many relationship typical in many blogs (and other media) by posting in a personal style directed at you - the present reader.

See how I used “you” there rather than another pluralised pronoun?

Okay, the hookup.

I happened upon one of his tweets (see my tumble about Twitter) which mentioned his impending presence in Dunedin. I thought, what, this guy, in Birmingham, coming to Dunedin - what for? Surely, it’s not to discuss my poorly disguised and executed appropriation of NMS for this site in person?

Fortunately no, he was speaking at a conference on popular music studies (which seems to be a place for music obsessives to discuss why their favourite music genre is the most important in the world using the most obscure language possible - what happens when these people get out their twenties and what’s with all the reading?)

I saw Andrew Dubber arrive and marched up to him (he looks remarkably similar to his photo although slightly less-well shaven). I introduced myself, a little nervously, trying hard not to sound like a stalker but needn’t have worried - the rapport was instant and the conversation flowed.

The cool thing was that our conversation seemed a bit like he had lept out of the page of his blog and the conversation simply carried on from where it had left off. And like any good conversation, you want it to continue while eating somewhere away from work.

Cue appropriated snapshot of myself and Chris Edwards sitting outside The Crib having enjoyed an excellent and stimulating lunch with Mr. Dubber (imagine he is positioned where you are now).

We discussed many interesting things including how this meeting would be documented on our respective Websites (who writes first? how nice do we have to be? who gets to use the photo? what if the posting is inaccurate? and so on).

I guess the point is, that I had a physical world experience with someone who up to this point was a collection of stories and thoughts on the Internet that could have been entirely fictional. Fortunately, his frankness in his writing created expectations that were more than realised meeting him in person.

I hope to meet him again and carry on where we left off.