Terry Jones

On Monday Tim O’Reilly posted a Twitter tweet suggesting to Robert Scoble that he contact me while in Barcelona.

First off, Tim is very generous in doing this. He’s ultra connected and he spends a significant amount of his time in Twitter pointing things out, connecting people, and re-tweeting stuff he finds interesting. Re-tweeting is really important because when you tweet you only reach the people who are already following you. But when someone re-tweets you, you reach new people who likely have no idea of your existence. And when Tim does the re-tweeting there can be a big impact. 24 hours after his message to Robert I had 50 new followers. Tim explicitly tries to help people doing things he finds interesting, but who have just a small number of Twitter followers. He filters and amplifies information, broadcasting it out to his 16,000+ followers. Robert was in a hotel about 10 minutes’ walk from my place and I had no idea. A mutual friend in California noticed and took a minute to connect us. That’s really something, and it perfectly illustrates some of the value of Twitter.

I met Robert yesterday afternoon and we spent 6 hours together. It was great. You can see at once why he’s been so successful: he’s smart, he’s thoughtful, he’s sympathetic, and he’s a careful listener. I had no idea what to expect, and seeing as what we’re building can take some time to sink in, I wondered what sort of an audience he’d be.

After we’d climbed around up in the Sagrada Familia (official site, wikipedia), Robert came back to my place to see a demo of the things I’d been describing. We sat down and he pulled out his cell phone and asked if he could film me. I didn’t really think about it and said of course. It didn’t dawn on me that we were doing an informal interview, and I was totally unprepared – which is probably a good thing.

In the end we filmed 4 segments: parts one, two, three, and four. There’s also been some discussion here on Robert’s FriendFeed page.

So if you’ve been wondering what we’re building in here, go watch the videos.

I had no idea all this was about to come down. The Fluidinfo web site (a generous word) was a single page with no contact information, no nuthin’. We simply haven’t needed a web site of any description yet. I went and added a box so you can sign up to receive news of the alpha launch.

And then there was this, posted on Twitter, and which I have absolutely no shame in reproducing (this is a blog, after all):

Wow, what @terrycojones showed me last night (a new kind of database that he’s been workng on for 11 years) blew me away. Uploading vids now

Now I have to put my head back down with Esteve to get the alpha out the door ASAP.

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