Third Life: Social Networking Breakfast with Jeff Pulver

“It’s like Facebook only it’s not online,” someone at Jeff Pulver’s social networking breakfast in Tel Aviv explained to somebody else. “There’s tagging and everything but it’s not virtual.” That’s a pretty accurate description of these real world events which build on not only connections but also techniques learned online.

Look at this picture of Jeff Pulver, himself:

The elements’ll be familiar to you if you use Facebook. The stickers on Jeff’s right side are his wall, meant for other people to write on. One way the ice gets broken between strangers is that they put tags on each others walls. You can see a yellow sticky someone put on Jeff and there are some little white ones as well.

The sticker on Jeff’s right side has his name and what is meant to be a conversation starting line he wrote about himself. His says “I take having fun seriously.” He does. Below that Jeff tagged himself, accurately, as a geek (unlike me, I’m a nerd).

The printed tag in the middle of Jeff’s chest is from the Marker COM.Vention in which this particular breakfast was imbedded. Craig Newmark of Craigslist and superblogger Robert Scoble were both at the COM.Vention, at Kinnernet which preceded it, and at the breakfast. Most of Jeff’s breakfasts are standalone; most guests are not famous. If you’d like to attend a breakfast near you, best things to do are either read Jeff’s blog or follow him on twitter. I’m trying to convince him to have one in Burlington, Vermont.

Just because the social networking breakfasts are live doesn’t mean technology goes away. At this one, and I suspect most others, there a huge variety of high tech cameras being used almost recursively. Note people taking pictures of each other and of others taking pictures of others and me (not seen) taking this picture and possibly someone taking a picture of me.

If you’d like to hear more about the social networking toolkit, which Jeff says he’s gonna patent, watch the inventor explain in the video below: