Getting ready to social network at breakfast a la Jeff Pulver

So we’re getting closer to the launch breakfast, and we’re excited. We’re especially excited that Jeff Pulver will be there leading us in his world-famous social networking. With the creation of his social networking system, Jeff has managed to bring the world of online social media and networking to the offline, three dimensional world where people actually meet and talk to each other.

The great thing about Jeff’s system is that it gives people the opportunity to benefit from the advantages that each type of networking offers. When networking online, we can quickly get an overview of a person’s interests and personality by looking at their profile, blog posts, tag cloud on their blog, friends, etc. However, no matter how much we communicate online, we can never entirely recreate the experience of talking to a person in real life and verbally communicating.

How does this social networking work?

Below is a video in which Jeff explains how his social networking works, but here’s a quick overview:

You get a little plastic bag.

The bag has stuff in it.

It has a pen, two labels, a label sheet, and mini post-it notes.

Now, here’s what you do:

You write your name and personal tagline on one label.
You write your personal tag cloud on the second label. A tag cloud is “a visual depiction of user-generated tags, or simply the word content of a site, used typically to describe the content of web sites. Tags are usually single words and are typically listed alphabetically, and the importance of a tag is shown with font size or color.” (Wikipedia on Tag Clouds). What this means for you is that if you love fishing and do it a lot, you write “fishing” in large text. If you don’t love the color red, you write that in smaller text (or whatever). Etc.
You use the label sheet for real-time tagging of other people. This means that while you’re talking to someone, write something down about that person on a label and stick it on ‘em. For example, you may find out that they are a blogger, photographer, Dad, or just plain amazing. Write it on a label, and stick it.
All that’s left are the post-it notes. These are for placing on everyone’s “walls.” I actually don’t quite get this part, since things that are written on people’s walls are things that make sense to actually say with your mouth. But anyways, that’s what it’s for.

The goal? As Jeff says, it’s to break down all the other walls around you. Nice.

Here’s the video. We’ll be testing you: