So I turn 40 today, and I was so incredibly shocked & humbled to see this:
My friend and colleague Dean Shareski orchestrated a crowdsourcing initiative which resulted in this heart-warming video in honour of my birthday. The people in the video, about 75 in total, are my friends, many of whom I’ve been fortunate enough to have met face-to-face or online over the past few years. I am truly blown-away by this – this is seriously the best birthday gift I’ve ever received. Thank you to everyone who participated in this and to all of those who shared warm birthday wishes with me via Twitter, Facebook, email, and face-to-face. I am so very fortunate to have such wonderful friends and loved-ones dear to me. Thank you all!
Special thanks to Dean Shareski. I know how much time an initiative like this takes and it is truly appreciated. This is truly wonderful. This is community.
And, if you haven’t seen it, here’s the vid:
Update #1: I wasn’t sure exactly how Dean facilitated the crowdsourcing of this project, but Rod Lucier’s post explains the process a bit better.
Update #2: Dean put together a great post clearly explaining the process.
I’m seriously blown away by this. I don’t know you, and I don’t know really anybody in the video, but I watched it in its entirety. It’s just such an obviously awesome manifestation of both the idea of “Networks” with a capital N, and of the warmth in the world directed at you besides. As an added bonus, I got to see moving images of some folks who I only “know” from brief ds106-related encounters (comments, Twitter, etc.). Good on @shareski too. Oh, and Happy Birthday!
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It was fun to do and really fun to watch. You are lucky to have such a great friend in Dean.
I hope you have a wonderful and happy birthday!
Alec,
I’m giving a talk this week on the power of social networking in education. I’m going to include this video just to show everyone everything that you’ve taught me about that power. Happy birthday!
Blinked and missed the opportunity to be part of the wonderful video, but I wish you the happiest birthday ever. :-)
What a great tribute to all you have contributed to the online world and a social network! Watched the video and smiled. I recognized many in there :) Hope the birthday stayed awesome for you! I have to say 40s not so bad!
This was great fun to be a part of, Dean did a fantastic job in putting it all together! And … you deserve it for ‘walking the talk’. Hope the day was a good one – see you next week!
Oh darn, I guess there’s a reason why I should continue using Twitter…I might have heard about it and participated! Ah well…it was fun to watch and I wish you a happy 40th, Alec.
So cool! Happy belated birthday.