As I start this post, it is Tuesday morning, 9th of June 2009, and the time is about twenty to 6 in the morning. I am in Zurich, sitting at the study in a hotel room. The reason why I state this – well.. read and find out!

Monday was all about communication at the client offices; my directors and I spent our first day in Zurich, spending time understanding their business processes. Our approach had to be pragmatic, inquisitive, and required us to communicate very strongly as trying to get our words across to the predominantly German speaking client; the challenge for us was to make sure that we understood what they were telling us and vice versa. In a way, we have one shot at this.

The day went very successfully (I think), we will know better over the next couple of days, and then into next week, when everything has to be documented (by yours truly). Being the workaholics that we are, we carried on with  somemore work after we came back; myself  sitting under an umbrella, in the hotels’ beer garden, sipping on OJ on rocks, working on my notes as it rained steadily (wasn’t windy, so was ok to sit out) around me. That is how I do it! .

At 7:30′ish, I dragged the directors against their will to downtown Zurich for a meal; they wanted to take it easy, but ofcourse, that’s not how it works. We ended up at an Italian restaurant, mainly because I was assured that Swiss cuisine isn’t all that. I took their word for it! The restaurant was located just off the river, and the evening was pretty sweet to sit outside and enjoy our meals (I had seafood Risotto – had about 25-30 mussels ).

Dinner was an interesting event; it lasted about 3 hours, and involved food and drink (sparkling water for me ), and flowing conversation. As tired as we were, there wasn’t a moment of silence in the air, and not one conversation was work related! We spoke about our youth, books, travel, wining and dining, university, culture, family life, and I can’t remember what more. One conversation which one of the directors and I frequently have is one on Social Media. It’s been two years since our first such conversation, and he is of the opinion that Social Media is good, but really not great on connections on day to day basis. I ofcourse disagreed with him!

Social Media, as I see it, is communication between people over the Internet. My presence on Social Networks exists via primarily this blog, Twitter (do click ), LinkedIn, Facebook, reading and commenting on blogs, twenty something Bloggers, NaBloPoMo and IM. I think I am more active via the first three means because it creates a good balance between work and social networking; I don’t think much about Facebook anyways.

So the conversation continued, and I explained to him how I have connected with people via Twitter and made friendships, met bloggers via reading and blogging, and have been able to help people or pointed people into particular directions (successfully) in their careers on LinkedIn. Social Network is the greatest means of communication that we are armed with at this present moment in time. I can blog or tweet with someone sitting in Japan, who doesn’t have a great command of English, but I can GET them and they can understand me if I am layman enough. Someone could whisper out something in Spanish, and I can pick it up because of some of my knowledge or Internet tools. More than anything else, Social Networking means can be used to reach across the globe to make a difference. The work done by twestival in organizing simultaneous global charity events via twitter is just mindblowing. The power of the message which is encapsulated in 140 characters cannot be underestimated.

As we threw our points to and fro, he asked me a very interesting question; Since I thought of myself as an active networker, would people notice if I was away from it completely for a day or two? A day or two because it was short enough to blink and miss my absence, but if I do have an impact, then people would come looking – right?

It seemed like an interesting challenge to try; I’d like to think of myself as a decent communicator, and as much noise that I make on various mediums, I am not a very very noisy person. Ok – maybe I can talk till the cows come home, but the real me is a listener and more inquisitive – asking questions rather than driving the conversation. Even during our dinner conversation, I was almost playing the role of a moderator as opposed to the source of conversation. I have been averaging 75 tweets per day for the last 3 months (some my own tweets and others are replies), and on average I blog every 1.7 days (yes, I am all about the stats!).

It got me thinking – what if I stayed shush for a day or two days – would anyone notice my absence? How much quiet time would it take for absence to be noticed?  Shush ofcourse means, no tweeting, no blogging, no LinkedIn responses, no reading/commenting on blogs, maybe even no emails. How would it be if I became that silent Cookie Monster, sitting behind the closed doors of Social Media? I know for a fact that the last time that I didn’t tweet on one Friday evening, I got 3 “are you OK there buddy?” messages; surely I had that much confidence in my buddies – especially when I was fighting a challenge against a Social Networking skeptic.

I guess as part of realizing my social media footprint, what I also really want to know is – how many of the people I am connected to are friends who would notice I was quiet? How many of my friends are really associates? Who are the people that I communicate with effectively enough – be it as small as the friendly Good Morning, or Good Night? Conducting an experiment over a couple of day would seem unfair based on the short time span and circumstances of people on that given day ofcourse; however I think it’s maybe more about being aware of the people around you than anything else.

So I accepted the challenge for a period of two days; this post will go out on Thursday morning with an update on the outcome later in the day. As much confidence that I have in the people around me, I have this feeling that outside of you readers on the blog, I am braced for some unexpected results. I’d like to think that I know my friends on the Social Network circuit, but I know that I don’t judge people that well. Whatever happens, I am intrigued to see what really happens?

Well… let’s find out. The time starts NOW!

Back to you guys on Thursday!