Meeting people on-line

The above scenario of creating client side meeting places must involve some kind of interaction between the owner of a client side cafe and the contacts that are brought in from a public meeting place. This presents a major problem because quite obviously, people can't just be yanked out of a people space and compelled to cooperate with the cafe owner's wishes, they would have to have a strong reason or motivation for wanting to communicate and cooperate with the cafe owner.

The key to any cooperation is the shared common interest. This can be both the ice breaker and the glue that holds any mutually beneficial communications together. If communication is beneficial to both parties then communication can take place. If either party does not benefit, then cooperation will not be possible. This make the success of finding suitable contacts in a people space a statistical exercise because only an unknown proportion of the other people at a meeting place will be suitably compatible with each other.

Let's say that a people space has been created for the purpose of bringing people together for the purpose of helping each other create Web sites. There are many possible categories that might include all manner of technical aspects of Web site solutions. Say one of these categories was designated for interest in payment solutions. This would attract people who provided solutions and those who needed them.

The people who needed them would be a little wary of dealing with any particular payment solution provider and might want to discuss with some of the others the relative values of the solutions on offer. By striking up private dialogues with each other the people who need the solutions can compare notes and experiences and help each other out in deciding who might be the best of the payment solution providers to get into conversation with. Such collaborative discussions would take place outside of the people space and in the private cafes of the people involved. The trick is to find somebody suitable to talk to and then persuade them to enter into personal dialogue.

However, as anyone who has engaged in this kind of Internet activity knows, it isn't a simple matter to get to really know people in Internet environments. It's something like going to a conference where you know there must be lots of interesting people who would be valuable to know but you don't actually get to talk to them. The only people who you get to know about are the speakers and this is a one way dialogue with no interaction.

There is a similar problem with large cocktail parties. There might be interesting people present but there never seems to be enough time to speak to everybody to find out who they are and what it is exactly they do. What you'd like to be able to do is is have a list of pertinent questions that you can quickly ask everyone present so you can decide who best to spend your time talking with. Unfortunately, society frowns upon this kind of behaviour.

From time to time, some of the e-mail discussion forums I belong to arrange real life meeting; usually in a wine bar or a convenient English pub, where we get together for a drink and informal chat. Invariably, these meetings fragment into small groups who engage in specific discussion concerning particular topics. There are always very interesting people at these meetings, but, it is extremely difficult to wander around to find out who everybody is, what skill sets they have and and what type of projects they are involved in. The same society norms prevail, preventing people asking each other direct and personal questions and then moving on to ask the same questions to everyone else.

These meetings are not held on a regular basis. They occur when somebody declares it is time for another meeting, others agree and then somebody takes the initiative to name a time, date and place for the meeting to be held. One time, in a forum of Web design freelancers I belong to, somebody called for a meeting to be held in London. Nobody came forward to organise the meetings so I called up a friend of mine who organises meetings for another on-line forum, who uses the premises of a private club he belongs to in London, suggesting we might organise a joint meeting between the two groups.

As the people from one group wouldn't know anything at all about the people in the other group, I asked all those who would be going to the meeting to send me a short bio, which I then put on a Web site. This worked extremely well as people could then knew beforehand who everybody was, their interests and work experiences. This allowed people to seek out those who might be of specific interest to them and led to several useful collaborative project sharing arrangements.

It is not difficult to see how such a similar arrangement might be beneficial to people who meet at virtual meeting places in a people space. This might be a key element in bringing people together.