Aspects of serendipity

Serendipity is a wonderful side effect of diverse, splintered communities; you get to meet people for the time, over and over again.

An interesting side effect of participating in electronic communities is the occasional need to introduce yourself multiple times to someone: "Hi, I'm Richard Soderberg, and also floating atoll", for instance. This has become more and more common recently. One example:

I learned about k-collector during an ETcon talk by Ben Hammersley. At the time, I've never met Ben Hammersley in person, but my nametag links to my site; the connection is made.

Weeks later, when I'm reading through a pile of unread articles, I find a call for help in a random blog post; I didn't notice which site it was from, but I did leave a comment offering help. A couple hours later, a post lands on the blog from Matt; he lists off the usual collection of multiple instant messenger contacts, and we converse. I ask after which blog he's from, and start finding references to k-collector.

In a well-timed example of synchronicity, it seems Matt wrote about this, too. Cool.