Ejovi Nuwere

Today is my last day in Japan and last night was my worst night in Japan. My Japanese cell phone was stolen which is still very upsetting to me and I had two arguments last night that still linger with me today. Those events occured back to back and only made them worse.

I generally try to avoid drinking alchohal but a few years ago I spent new years in Tokyo and drank too much. It was the only time I drank to the point of being sick. My friends had to carry me home. Along the way someone had the bright idea to give me chocolate milk. Lets just say that while I left the store the milk remained on the floor infront of the checkout counter. I slept all day the next day and woke up still sick. Late that night I was frustrated because I wasnt recovering. Eventually I had a drink of water and my health started to improve. The problem was that even though it was late the next day I still had alchohal in my stomach. The water helped dilute it and I could begin to recover. After an hour or so of drinking water I was almost fully recovered. With anger and frustration lurking inside, what should I take to recover?

I was talking to my friend Yuki in Tokyo. I have known her for awhile and like some of my other friends who regularly read my blog, even though we don’t see each other often she knows how I think. She noted that during our conversation I called gather.at a company. I had to correct myself. Its not a company. A company has a business model and revenue projections gather.at has none of those. Gather.at is just my project/idea. Its a idea involving me and 500 other people who know me. During our conversation we noted:

The only thing holding the 500 people together is their connection to me.

Despite being the key connector many of the members do have a lot in common. This was apparent at our first dinners in Osaka and Tokyo. I attract a certain type of person and those people tend to get along together.

I’m only the key connector because I haven’t allowed the site to go live.

Why isn’t gather.at live right now? No reason in particular. I was supposed to send out invitations this past week but I’ve been having a difficult time managing everything. Especially things involving scheduling. It was amazing how several people in Japan volunteered to help me organize things. I just could not have done it alone. I think the solution is to organize a small comittee in each country who can help me going forward.

I learned that:

Regardless of what setbacks you may face, if you are around good people you will still enjoy yourself.

Things never go as planned. But when I had cool people around me everything in the end seemed to be OK. On the other hand even when things seemed to be going well, if I was around people who weren’t friendly it ruined the entire experience. Find good people and keep them close.

Keep an open mind.

This seems obvious but I think we too narrowly apply this concept. Keep an open mind to the types of people we meet? The types of food we eat? The kinds of venues we visit? It means be open to everything. Many of us try to follow linear lives and end up getting frustrated when we get off track.

Why is gather.at not a social network.

Gather.at is about nurturing friendships. The analogy is that friendships are organic. A online social networking is not organic, its mechnical. Gather.at is not about social networking its about social lifestyle.

I feel a little less frustrated and angry about last night, but I still wish my phone hadn’t been stolen.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 7th, 2006 at 9:59 pm and is filed under , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.