Of pens, pencils and social media

I’ve always loved pens.

I just met Phil. He gave me a pen. (How cool is that?) He told me about the Lev­enger Store at Macy’s — a few blocks from the con­fer­ence I attended over the week­end. Nor­mally Lev­enger will assem­ble a small note­book for you to try out their pens on. Sadly, they were out of the paper, so I couldn’t get one. I did test drive a few of their pens. Nice. My bud­get wouldn’t quite stretch for the one I liked, but I did buy some pen­cils! My buddy Jon is ana­logue enough that he likes pen­cils, so I shared my pack with him.

One of the rea­sons I enjoy the social media com­mu­nity is that they’re very open-handed and friendly, as evi­denced by Phil and Jon. Even though Chris has more than 66,000 fol­low­ers on Twit­ter, he greeted me like a long-lost friend. (That was our first time to meet in per­son, though we have known each other through blog­ging for almost four years.) Jon, Becky, Sheila, NEENZ and I were good bud­dies by the end of the conference.

The social media com­mu­nity is a huge con­trast to the graphic design com­mu­nity. When I fin­ished col­lege, I started work in Dal­las. I went to sev­eral pro­fes­sional design­ers’ meet­ings. They seemed to be cen­tered around achieve­ment and ego. I never fit in. But the social media com­mu­nity cel­e­brates those with dis­abil­i­ties that some may look down on. How refreshing!

And the pen­cils and pen are nice.

Take­away: what are some ways you can be open-handed today?