Neotokyo: Oscar Yasser Noriega’s Blog (Akira)

Fafi’s Tools Originally uploaded by akirareikoThe story begins as I was reading my RSS feeds after a terrible week being sick at home. My doctor said I had a “light case” of laryngitis, even tough I felt terribly bad. Most of the week for me was taking pills, eating a lot, and having industrial amounts of liquids. I really felt isolated. The only connection I had with the outside world was my Blackberry which was very useful to stay on bed and reply some urgent emails and phone calls.On thursday night I began checking Twitter often again, and I saw that some people were talking about Fafi, one of my most favorite painters/graffiti artist ever.Some friends are always saying to me that social networks and web apps like Twitter are just a waste of time.One of my partners (at the publishing company) says that he works 2 more hours per day because he doesn’t use Myspace, Flickr, Facebook and many others. I agree he has one strong point if we go down to the numbers: it’s true, if you spend 2 hours per day on these websites you are probably wasting 2 hours of your precious work-time. But what if you need to track down what your friends or business partners are doing? what if these persons are not in your same city or country? What if these persons are not really aware of their mail boxes?. In my case, I have some contacts and friends that are more aware of the comments on their blogs, their Facebook profiles or Twitter rather than their cellphones or emails. That’s my case, and I’m not saying it’s always like this for everyone.Twitter totally saved me and opened the door to something I wasn’t expecting. I was part of the conversation in my network of contacts and that helped me to be aware that Fafi was coming to Mexico City. This is a simple example of how being part of the conversation can sometimes give you the opportunity to do something that was not on your schedule, and this totally applies to the business world as well.