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So it was with Rose Mirielle Exumé and her sister Alta Grace Garcon who one Monday afternoon left their home in Deerfield Beach, Florida to travel the 15 miles or so to Broward General.

What is normally a routine journey on I-95 was for this family anything but and Olivier Jean Paul Exumé was born in the fast lane in the back seat of his auntie’s SUV.

For the drivers on the road that day who would have imagined the drama in that car pulling over for no apparent reason? For sure, they were as oblivious to the clamor that accompanied baby Olivier’s birth just as the heaving mother and her panic-stricken sister were oblivious to the travelers speeding by.

Like the information superhighways where data streams in self-contained packets so too do people transport themselves along I-95 absorbed in the bubble of their own journey and experience. Data conveying information about national security and seismic activity share the same beam of light as updates about Uncle Vinnie’s hemorrhoids. No doubt gangsters running drugs and soccer Moms dropping off children were among those whistling by the lurching SUV.

Olivier’s passage was featured on the evening news. The miracle of life was not in of itself important but the circumstances of its coming to be the “human interest” headline. This is the kind of warm and fuzzy stuff that keeps viewers glued to the box while the commercials run, good for ratings, good for business.

Where the news was most welcomed was in the neighborhood where Rose and her sister lived. Carried by word-of-mouth, the news soon traveled beyond the metropolis and the farthest reaches of I-95 to places where the network is defined by the community of familial ties, shared experiences, language and culture.

Suddenly, Rose was getting messages from “friends” who she never knew she had. It included people she had never heard of but who felt a connection nonetheless. It transpired that through this one and that one they shared mutual friends. People who she had left behind in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince suddenly popped up living around the corner and up the road. Just as new friendships were being made old ones were being reestablished.

The network was working. It began to take on a tangible form in the gift of diapers, car seats, bibs and bibles. An everyday event, remarkable only for the time and place of it, was the catalyst for a form of “social networking” that transcended self-interest and who-knows-who. Rose and others were personally enriched by the experience.

I-95 is a road that is seemingly always under construction. Today the work is less about the route and more about the ride. Likewise, today the Internet and its proliferation of tools, applications and content is less about the network and more about relevancy for its users.

In both instances, physical and virtual connections are easier and faster to make and navigate. But the things that define and connect communities in the real world and online are changing in ways that make “bringing physical community to online networks” a harder thing to do than at first we might think.

For those of us whose imagination is sparked by the possibility and promise of the Recruiting Roadshow there is much to reflect on in Rose’s story. For example:

When our careering down the road precludes us from being first hand witnesses to the daily miracles of life or when the human experience is trivialized to serve commercial interests; or when we fail to learn the trusted vernacular that makes word-of-mouth credible; or we fail to respond in ways that strengthen our ties to “place,” how will we ever enjoy the gifts of relative strangers who would rather you call them “friend?”

“Bringing physical community to online networks,” imagine that.

Here I am today watching the latest in the now degenerated genre of let-me-addle-your-brains-with-a-factoid-video and find myself asking, “So what?”

[Trouble viewing the video? Watch it on YouTube]

Okay, so another 100 hours of video just got uploaded to YouTube — so what? 78 percent of articles on Wikipedia are not in English — your point is? 34 percent of bloggers post opinions about products and brands — who would have thought it!

Of course, if all this data does have import, and my business will suffer for my not paying attention to it, I might as well slink off now, huddle up in the corner, and die. Ah, but then what?

Since my last writing I have started, stopped and abandoned one post too many.  Among my tomes of “unpublished rhyme” I have a fair bit that reflect on time and such things. For example…

I have drafts on everything ranging from my recollections of  reading Time–The Next Source of Competitive Advantage years ago when working at NYNEX to a napkin-manuscript titled “No time like the present.” After laying around for a while, that draft ultimately fulfilled its intended purpose. It was used to clean up baby-slobber and, I might add, at the very moment it was needed most. Ah, fulfilled and unfulfilled all in the same instance — priceless, ain’t it?

I have been toying with the idea of “making time” to post here. But of course, time is never really the issue, is it? How easy it is to confuse the continuum of time with how we should prioritize our being — at once and at the same time — a part of it and apart from it.

On the subject of time then, and realizing the possibility that, indeed, there is no time — save for billable hours of course — let me point you to a few wonderful things to amuse you should you find yourself with time on your hands, or time to spare, or time to kill, or just maybe, no time to stop…enjoy!

…and so much more…

1. The New Rules of Viral Marketing – David Meerman Scott
2. Marketing Apple – MarketingApple.com
3. Masters of Marketing – Startup Internet Marketing
4. Podcast Marketing eBook – Christopher S. Penn
5. Google Adwords Secrets – SEOBook
   
6. Get Viral Get Visitors – Stacie Mahoe
7. Marketing With Case Studies – Dynamic Copywriting
8. How to Write a Marketing Plan – Geisheker Group
9. SEO for WordPress blogs – Blizzard Internet
10. Social Web Analytics – Social Web Analytics
11. Geeks Guide to Promoting Yourself With Twitter – Geekpreneur
12. The Zen of Blogging – Hunter Nutall
13. What is Social Media – iCrossing
14. A Primer in Social Media – SmashLab
15. Effective Internet Presence – Effective Internet Presence
16. Introduction to Good Usability – Peter Pixel
17. Increasing the Response to Your Email Marketing Program – CRM Transformation
18. We Have a Website. Now What? – Craig Rentmeester
19. Blogs & Social Media – PRSA
20. The Podcast Customer Revealed – Edison Media Research

First thing: An earlier reading of Gifford Pinchot’s book Intrapreneuring, a topic worth revisiting I think;

Second thing: Recent conversations with all sorts of people who lament the problems they have implementing things 2.0 in their organizations’ thinking and practice.

Hmmm…

In speaking to hundreds of workers and managers for large organizations (government and private sector), I’ve been asked the same questions, over and over:

• How do you convince your boss to even experiment with social media?
• Doesn’t it mean a lot of extra work?
• Isn’t this sort of stuff blocked by our organizational policies?

This Secret Underground Guide to Social Media for Organizations is meant to help you answer some of those questions.

Enjoy — the whole thing is here.

Particularly disappointing was Scoble’s self-confessed, web-enabled obsessive-compulsiveness and apparent delight at finding new ways to feed it. Rather than seek help for what most would consider a disorder it appears he finds all the solace he needs in a similarly unhealthy physical attachment to his computer. I could be wrong but it just struck me that way, very odd.

If you want to cut to the chase, here’s the video…

[Wassup, can't see it? Try WorkFast TV instead.]