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I have always been a fan of overcommunicating, especially at work.  The more I knew what was going on at Northwestern, the more I felt I could contribute to the overall mission of the department.  I love all of the new ways to communicate, especially ones that involve writing.  I have a degree in Journalism so sometimes I forget about the spoken word, which I realized when I called one of my closest friends, Katie, last week and she picked up the phone and said, "Is something wrong?  We never talk on the phone."  With as much as I like to talk, she was right.  It got me thinking about how much I rely on email, text, IM, Facebook and Twitter to stay in touch with people.

In fact, Angie Sit stopped by our office today on her cross country trek, which I had been following via Twitter.  A few weeks ago she wasn't sure when she would be passing through, but I was able to guess based on her Facebook and Twitter posts the last few weeks. When she got here, we were able to skip right to the good stuff because we were already caught up on the basics through our social media outlets.  Angie, along with Craig Pintens, were the ones who got me hooked on Twitter when we were at the NACMA Board meetings in Boston two summers ago, and it has helped me keep up with what's going on in the industry.  It has also been a great source of networking with people I might not have met otherwise.

For example, Tricia Robben from the NAIA started following me on Twitter last year.  I didn't know her so I checked out her profile and saw that she was putting out some good tweets so I followed her back.  A few months later, I was presenting at the NAIA Convention in Kansas City and she came up to introduce herself.  We jumped right into a conversation because I felt like I already knew her based on her tweets so we had a great discussion rather than one filled with meaningless small talk.

On August 15, Tricia tweeted "at what point does "I was really impressed with you during the interview" become "we'd like to offer you a job"..? #impressivebutunhireable?"  I had been thoroughly impressed by my encounter with Tricia back in April so that tweet caught my attention.  I sent her a direct message asking her where she was applying and offered my help if she needed it.  We continued communicating via email and we even talked on the phone about where she was headed and how she could get there.

That next week a job opened up here at The Hat and Zac asked me if I knew anyone who might be interested.  Less than two weeks later, Tricia became the newest member of the Old Hat Staff!  What started with a click of a button to follow me on Twitter has become an awesome addition to the Old Hat family.  Who needs the phone when you have Twitter?