Meeting Friends, Old and New

Today, I had an interesting time meeting two new people – one person I’ve “known” for over ten years, and another I met a few months ago. With both, I’ve mostly just communicated with them via text. But the interesting thing is that I got to meet them both in person for the first time.

I met with Chad (aka St. Ego) for lunch, who’s in town for a few days with his fiancé. Chad is from way back in the day, back when a site called were-here.com was the go-to place for the nascent Flash community. I first came across the WH forum back in 2000, when I stepped foot in the tech world and stated doing Flash full time.

The WH site eventually shuttered, and with a lot of folks in search of a new home… one of the old WH members created Twelvestone – where many of the old WH folks now reside (me included).

Back when I was still learning Flash, I remember Chad doing this thing called Friday Night Phone Tag. For those of us who were home on Fridays, we would have these large, impromptu conference calls – with more and more people joining in as the night wore on. In some cases, folks were in various states of sobriety, and in different time zones to boot.

Chad and I met up at the Gage for an early lunch, as he was on his way to a job interview in the suburbs. We caught up on the old days of our online community, and talked a bit about how odd it is to “know” people from online. Explaining such friendships to non-tech folks is always a kind of weird thing, especially when you refer to people with names like St. Ego, FlamingoJeff, shuteye, arigato, etc.

It was a fun thing to meet Chad in person, after all this time – when our primary mode of communication has been mostly text (with the occasional phone call).

After work, I met up with Derek for some drinks at Longman. Derek had emailed me several months ago, shortly after I began contract work at Sears, about a potential freelance job with DePaul. Funny enough thing – his team works on the exact same floor as Liz! I thought Liz must have passed along my name to him, but it turns out one of his guys found my site independently… and were looking to see if I wanted to take on some front end work.

We’ve traded emails off and on since that initial contact, and though the freelance didn’t pan out – decided it would be good to simply meet in person, and talk a bit more. I learned that Derek also started with Flash at the beginning (maybe a year or so before I got my start), circa 1998.

We also compared a lot of stories – the differences between working for a small company, versus working within a larger institution (and the trade-offs that come with both). We swapped stories about being managers as well, and the interesting transitions that occur from being “the guy who does things,” and trying to turn into the “guy who delegates things.”

When we set up the meeting, I was half-expecting it to be a kind of informal interview of sorts. But it turned out to be just the two of us, talking about our respective histories with technology. The talks were incredibly informal, and it felt like we had known one another for a long while… and were just catching up on old times.

Related:
How Many Imaginary Internet Friends Have You Met?
Russ and Liam: Twelvestone in Chicago
Friends for Eight Years, Meeting for the First Time