The Owen Meany of the webspace, Trust Agent Chris Brogan

So as you saw from my last post I'm changing the flavour up a bit here and going back to my original voice. as Dr Seuss said 

"You are you, that's truer than true, theres no one else thats youer than you". 

So yesterday evening we stepped out for an autumn walk, I had been office-bound with my digits superglued to my computer for days. As we went out the door I grabbed two things as a last reflex, my umbrella and my iphone which I slipped into my jacket.

It turned into a long walk as we set a target for the next village, five miles away, it was raining softly but I was happy, and I speak only for myself here, as it had been raining for a week solid. Italians are never happy when it rains they go into a deep funk, and the Grinch next to me was no exception..

We walked along with me discovering that my legs go left right, left right, what a buzz! I had forgotten how I love that movement, I have twice done a 87 km ultra marathon of speedwalking, when I was fitter and leaner, pre blogging, now I have bloggers bum. The Grinch's fur kept him warm enough in the fog.

It was a good hour and a half's walking, after going down one way street and turning back to find the two bars we knew closed, we suddenly came upon a new candlelight cosy winebar, new to us as if in a mirage.

It was lovely as only a winebar after a cold wet walk can be to a winelover like myself.  It would have been lovely to a Mormon who had never touched a drop of wine. and it was lovely to us.

We got a table, it was six thirty and the place gradually filled up with couples. I had a great glass of  Traminer and as we sat there the Grinch and I, enjoying the spread of aperitivi they put out ,all was well with the world. I dried out my shoes on the radiator, ate vitello tonnato and crostini and kicked back to drink in the ambience as my legs got used to that ache. I was deeply satisfied.

Yes, so what has this got to do with Chris Brogan I hear you impatiently ask? Well wait I'm getting there.

Realising I now had to walk back the same six kms  to get home, I started to be extra nice to the Grinch, some might even say solicitous, because I hoped he would have a fitness desire and offer to go back and get the car parked  back at the warm home we had left it behind, on this cold November night when we went out for a stroll that turned into 6kms..

My powers of persausion werent needed, as the Grinch sneered his sneer which was almost a grin by now, and said. "Hey why don't I walk back and bring the chariot?"  and I smiled a whoish smile and said "Why how kind and gentalmanly of you!

As I sat alone at  the best  table in a room that had now swelled to capacity with people climbing over each other to get to the bar with throbbing dance music blaring,  I noticed a little sign they had stuck on my table "booked for 8.30".

Which meant I was occupying a prime table which people were making eyes at.

So what the Dickens has this got to do with Chris Brogan? Well I'm getting to it!!

I groped around in my pocket  and wadda you know! An iphone! AND it had enough battery power!

This is exactly the moment that Steve Plobs or whatever his name is, or was it Gluckerberg? conceived of when he decided to design a little box of tricks called an iphone, except I wasnt going to phone. No sireeeee, I was going to check my mail box which was stacked as high as Mount Tamaro, make that four mail boxes ( I'm collecting  them)

So as I logged into wisequeen at grinch mail .com. What came up as my daily bread among all the begging letters, offers to lengthen my toggle, and promises of better storage?

THIS -  What we let slip away -Chris Brogan

I stopped  fiddling and read. Reading in a wine bar on my Steve Plobs magic box. ahh!!! what sweet pleasure. This fingertip poem was at my fingertips.

  And this advice on writing....

I started following Chris Brogan's blog way back in the day,  when I was hired by a Canadian blogging network to write about Digital money, back in the day before Twitching was invented. Whats that thing,?Twitting, twiching whatever....

Since then, his posts land in my box with the satisfying thud and gravitas that a newspaper thrown onto your porch gives you.

This meat and potatoes man,  who probably still showers with a bar of soap, and probably doesn't even own a tube of hair gel,  who I have since watched influence hoards and speak on international stages has crept into our hearts like Owen Meany did, by his sheer simplicity. I notice  his refusal to drink his own bathwater as so many narcissistic  soc med gurus do.

He dislikes the word guru used here as much as I do, I know, I've interviewed him, tweeted with him and will again learn, above all, I've learned about connecting and being a Trust Agent from him.

Hes not a GURU instead hes a GRU (the Italian word for a crane) something that's essential for building, lifting and rising up from the ground.

So as I read through two weeks of Broganish posts all as useful and sticky as the next, I spend a joyful hour amongst the crush, and giggles of Italians communing in a wine bar, and I knew that I had another question to ask this blue collar hero.

How do you stay so humble and focused?

If you need to know about becoming a Trust Agent and a little more human, look no further than the chance to hear him speak on b2b marketing #b2beu his subject, at Berlin on Dec 1 and 2 I will be there too.

The Grinch came back and sneered his sneer "your chariot is outside and his eyes shone yellow under the lamplight as I was wisked away still connected to my magic box., another couple were smugly moving onto that table and the candle light shone though the windows..

@wisequeen

Donna Jackson

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