b a t t l e c a t . n e t

Or “These are not the droids you are looking for”.*

The theme for my first ever Bar Camp this past weekend in Sheffield was “community and conversation.”  Conveniently, most of the people in Sheffield I wanted to catch up with or get to know better were at Bar Camp. Even better, one of my best friends from Adelaide and another friend were down from Newcastle Upon Tyne for the weekend.

Since I was returning to a place where I’d briefly lived yet made a number of great connections, it felt fitting to run a session on friendship and how to move to a new town.

My original title for this session was going to be How to move to a new place, make friends and influence people. On arrival at Bar Camp Sheffield I realised that I wanted my session to be more than a presentation: how could I get people to turn up and talk about how we meet, become friends and influence each other? So I cunningly threw in a Star Wars related title.

My suspicions about who turns up at Bar Camps were justified! There was a crowd of geeks… Then, without notes or a sequence of events I had to run my session.

I’d initially thought about running this as a presentation complete with slides and er, planning, but I wanted to play with the unconference environment of Bar Camp and in the end settled for a more impromptu conversation-like session which I tried to direct with some questions.  I felt that it was a style of discussion that worked particularly well with the topic.

As a result, my slightly disjointed notes are from memory.  I’ve tried to record key elements of what I said, what I wish I’d said and how other people responded.  If you have a better memory and can tell me something I forgot, or have something that you wish you’d had a chance to mention on Saturday, please leave a comment below.

It was a great experience for my first ever BarCamp – I’m looking forward to seeing how future events shape up in comparison (free beer and food?!). Thanks so much to Jag, Ian, Jay and Josie for organising such a lovely weekend!

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Motivation

I want to explore the nuances of friendship and the distinctions between strangers, acquaintances and friends.  I’m not yet sure whether to do this as artistic practice or to follow it academically or professionally.

Inspiration:

• Futuresonic ’08 – Matt Jones of Dopplr “Kill ‘Friending’ and the binary recording of relationships”
  • Started me thinking about the nuances of friendship – online we click a button to say Yes, we’re friends, but how do we recognise and acknowledge friends in real life? What are the qualities we look for, how do we ‘know’ that person x is a friend?
• James Boardwell’s talk at GeekUp Sheffield (July ’08) on “internet sensibilities: remodelling humans”.
  • A couple of slides in particular grabbed my attention – the comparison of the way teenagers record degrees of friendship. Girls did this very consciously and frequently with people they knew moving in and out of a layers / circles of friendship.
• Moving from city to city – I’m able to socialise easily and know many people I count as friends around the world (NB: friends here implies various levels of intimacy and “bestness”). I now seem to have an innate ability to start interacting with anyone of any age – but can I do make even better connections with people?
  • When thinking of this event I was wondering what techniques other people used when interacting with others, especially in new cities with unfamiliar languages and cultural conventions.

Things I Remember Saying, Questions I Remember Asking:

• How I became social: When I was 18 my boyfriend Ringo gave me detailed instructions on how to start talking to people. “Compliment them on their clothes, make a comment about something nearby and then ask them questions about themselves”.
• How does one know when they are friends with someone?
  Possibly because they are traditionally associated with economic obligations, I feel that romantic relationships and business relationships have a formality associated with them that isn’t just about marriage and business contracts. First kisses and handshakes are an “informal” way of starting something.
• Could there be a biochemical and therefore evolutionary reason for why we’re friends with some people and not with others?
  I’m particularly interested in this – how come we just don’t get on with some people who have many similarities and shared interests with us?
• Do other people find it difficult to stop being friends with other people?
  Are friend ‘breakups’ as codified and formal as those with romantic / sexual partners or with business relationships?
• Do friends expect certain behaviour from each other?  Eg. in a romantic relationship there’s usually many conditions – you shall not kiss / touch / flirt / have sex with another person.
  Interestingly the major problems I’ve had with friends have been when I’ve broken some type of friendship condition that I was unaware of.
• If we can become “friends” so easily online – why are we now unable to talk with our immediate community of neighbours?
  Someone whose name I never caught mentioned that when he moved to a new house he left cards with his immediate neighbours and felt that that action actually reduced the interaction he had with them.
• Does anyone else find public transport an amazing place to meet people?
  General consensus: Yes, but not on the Tube.  Lucy from SY was very happy to admit to being the crazy talkative lady on the bus. (Go Girl!)

I Remember Other People Talking About:

• Guy Dickinson talked about how his grandmother had been remembered as being a good friend.  He thought it was primarily to do with the fact that she rarely talked – most of the time she was listening to other people.
• GD – very conscious use of “social skills” (i.e. that done by salespeople) would often put him off talking to them.
• GD – Fine line between Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and people who are naturally good at interaction and who make eye contact, ask questions etc without it being an act.  (further reading: The Game by Neil Strauss)
• GD – Differences in business behaviour across cultures eg. US far more overtly “networked” with cards and working out who was known in common. In France meetings more likely to start with general conversation so that those involved had developed some deeper connection than just business.
• Dan Donald – talked about how there are layers of friendship. Some people you can see once every couple of years and still be amazingly close. Other people can be around you every day but still not be a friend.
• DD – mentioned the book The Politics of Experience by RD Laing and in particular how it discusses the ways we interact with other people.
• Social Networking
  Inevitably this discussion turned away from traditional friendship and mutated into a talk about social networks and online reputations.
  • GD – had for a while made sure he was the only Guy Dickinson up the top of Google.
    Also he felt that his daughter used Bebo in a different way to Facebook as she was ‘friends’ with him on one social network and not the other.
  • Emma Persky spoke at length about how she uses different social networks depending on how she knows people.
    She uses Linked In to manage connections with people she knows professionally and from conferences and  Facebook for connections with ‘real’ friends. Uses Twitter to follow anyone she’s interested in regardless of whether they’ve met before.
    Has two business cards – a professional one courtesy of her employer and a personal Moo card.
    Interestingly she’s happy to share a lot of personal details such as address via the web implying a large amount of trust in social networks.
• Lucy and Emma from Screen Yorkshire were also active participants, especially about offline relationships.
• Lucy mentioned that she has can maintain a limited number of friends.
  This led to talking about the Dunbar’s Number and whether it had changed, relative to the speed with which we can keep in contact with people.
• The reference to Dunbar’s Number also tied in with Malcolm Gladwell’s book “The Tipping Point”

Things I wish I’d mentioned

• I still feel guilty if I give someone “best friend” status – it’s like I take the word very literally and can only have one very close friend at any one time. Taking the Dunbar Number and limits of socialising into consideration, is it possible to have many very close and good friends?
• Love / Hate lists in primary school. Way back before social networks or even the web existed my school friends and I used to keep lists of who we liked and who were our sworn enemies and would move them in and out as they changed status.
• I really like how Flickr connections are recorded by default as ‘contacts’ and that being recorded as a friend or family requires a separate click.
  For a while Facebook made it compulsory to list how you knew someone and that had to be confirmed by the other person. Did this classification of ‘friend’ annoy people?
• Learning how to talk to dogs in different languages is important – it’s a great way of meeting people.
  • For the record the German for ‘sit’ is sitz and in Finnish it’s istu - Can you help me out with any other languages?

Further Reading:

• Derrida – The Politics of Friendship.  I only just found out about this today. It’s on my wishlist if anyone wants to gift me, but I’m not exactly looking forward to reading an entire book written by Derrida.
• Malcolm Gladwell – The Tipping Point. A great book which introduced me to Dunbar’s Number and social roles like connectors and mavens.
• Just found online: Is a Social Media Friend Really a Friend?

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* Apologies to anyone who did turn up to my session expecting more than one Star Wars reference – the smart ones of you will have noticed that the titling of my session was an actual mind-trick which got people into Bar Camp Sheffield’s Open Space.

UPDATES:

• I recently spoke with someone about this topic and they mentioned that children are always actively making and breaking up with their friends. The woman I was speaking with had worked in a primary school and had noticed that as children they were very contract-minded about why they would stop being friends with each other. eg. “Mark wouldn’t share his candy with me! He’s my best friend and best friends always share candy.”
  Why and when does this outlining of what you expect from your friends become more unspoken?
• I’ve also just read the most amazing article which references a book called Friendship Processes by Beverley Fehr:
  

  With intriguing accuracy, sociologists and psychologists have delineated the forces that attract and bind friends to each other, beginning with the transition from acquaintanceship to friendship. They’ve traced the patterns of intimacy that emerge between friends and deduced the once ineffable “something” that elevates a friend to the vaunted status of “best.”

  Friendship: The Laws of Attraction, Why Some (And Only Some) Friends Stick

• I’m still overwhelmed by how many people I’d met in the three months I spent living in Sheffield and how enjoyable it was to catch up with them as well as meet new people at BarCamp.
  Revisiting Sheffield has really helped to reassure me that I’ll make as good a circle of friends in Berlin given enough time. I’ll report back on my progress at BarCampSheff 3.0!

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