What I Took Away From Julien Smith at Social Media Club That You Probably Didn’t

Like the rest of you I sat there listened with an open mind to Julien Smith (www.inoveryourhead.net) and was prepared to learn. When he first started talking about the origins of the radio, I thought: “Where the fark is this going, and do I really have to sit through a ‘100 years of Communication Technology’ talk?”

Thankfully it did not.

Very quickly Julien turned it around and gave a very insightful talk about, building channels, being more social, relationships, grouping etc. Of course the previous sentence cannot sum up the entirety of the talk, nor can the illegible notes that I took. If you have gotten this far down in the post you were probably in attendance and are curious about what I got out of it that you didn’t. I don’t need to rehash everything.

So here we go with what I took away that you didn’t:

FBI Agent Dale Cooper Knows What is Going On.

So who the hell is Dale Cooper? If ever watched the television series Twin Peaks then you know exactly who I am talking about. Dale Cooper is an FBI agent that was dispatched to a small (non existent) Washington town of Twin Peaks to investigate the murder of Laura Palmer.

Julien had mentioned that you need to say ‘Yes’ to more things. Saying yes gets you out of the house, it makes you more social, you interact more with people, build stronger networks and most importantly: You build more social capital.

For example when Dale Cooper arrived in Twin Peaks, he was first treated as an outsider. Small towns are very cliquey, and not always accepting of strangers. Agent Cooper embraced the small town life and tried to immerse himself within its culture and said yes to every opportunity that he was offered. Very quickly he became accepted within Twin Peaks and was not longer considered a stranger.

Shortly after exposing Laura Palmers murderer, Agent Cooper came under investigation by the FBI and the DEA for a raid on a local brothel/casino (One Eyed Jacks). During this time many members of the town rallied around him for support, and helped him reveal the truth about an undercover drug ring.

This is a prime example about how saying yes to trying new things, meeting new people and developing networks can help you build social capital, and how this social capital can be used.

Another Twin Peaks example about people in groups: Did you ever notice that everyone in the town of Twin Peaks loves coffee and pie?

Alan Alda Knows a Thing or Two About Communication Networking & Pattern Breaking.

This may seem quite odd and is probably irrelevant, but there were a few times that people may have thought that I was sleeping through the talk. There were  moments where I closed my eyes and just listened. It wasn’t  because I was sleepy or because I was tired of staring at the back of Mike Vardy’s head. It was because I was imagining that  the seminar was being led by Hawkeye Pearce. I found that Julien Smith’s voice was very reminiscent of Alan Alda.

Those were the things that I took away from lecture that you probably didn’t:  A Twin Peaks metaphor and some strange M*A*S*H hallucinations.