Third Place

“The way you can understand all of the social media is as the creation of a new kind of public space.” – Danah Boyd

In some ways it is kind of old news to see tweet streams come across TweetDeck concerning a conference you were unable to attend. And, in other ways it still truly astonishes me that we have that kind of intimate access. Emotional access via the cool new third place.

AIM Conference

I had the privilege of attending the Apartment Internet Marketing Conference a couple of years ago and hands down, it was/is the best of breed. It draws in the best of the best from all over the country. Steve Lefko and his team put on a compelling show. And, it is a show – theater at it’s best. With the best internet marketing thespians acting out vignettes of knowledge laden action oriented prose, wit and wisdom. It truly is a Third Place- at least in my head.

The Third Place

Wikipedia describes it this way –

The third place is a term used in the concept of community building to refer to social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace.

I describe it this way –

Crazy cool, awe-inspiring, over the top, compelling place of uber-excellent actionable idea creation…

To my point – despite not being able to attend this years conference, social media (twitter specifically) has allowed me and many others to feel this Third Place. With the likes of Lisa Trosien, Mike Whaling and Mark Juleen live tweeting, I quite literally feel myself getting emotional loaded both for the support and the retort of things that are tweeted. It’s the deepest meanings of compelling.

Hats off to the AIM team for creating a conference that is worthy of a moniker such as third place. Trust me, it’s in the budget for next year…

Your – lovin’ the ability to feel a third place from thousands of miles away – multifamily manic,

M