Okay… So I wasn’t going to get involved, because I’m always running like a chicken with my head cut off.

Then, Steve Heimoff caught my ear when he talked to me about the Conference. Steve’s my buddy with whom I talked about the need for his blogging, and how he just had to get started. I felt we all needed a good dose of his blogging voice, and he’s not disappointed a soul, I’m thinking. He’s a brilliant writer; one of our finest. Now, I found Steve giving me pause to think about my own direction.

Next, we had a Diaz Communications (my family business) retreat, and business networking was brought up as a topic. I’ve done so much business networking in my professional life that I thought it was over, because been-there-done-that, created the community garden, initiated a scholarship for immigrants and refugees through the ESL program as the University of Southern Maine through the Portland, Maine Rotary Club, what else was left to do, if I were to get involved? I’ve been holed up in my office, trying not to see the Wine Bloggers’ Conference logo, info, gotta-get-into stuff, etc.

Finally, I returned from our retreat, and I found myself signing up.

Why?

Because of the above, and because now I’m pretty curious, which is what always seems to lead me to my next big leap of faith.

In signing up, there’s an immediate Internet social network begun by just getting one’s name into the fray. And there you go… Off and running.

The Internet is a wondrous thing. There is one wine blogger in China who links to my site on a continual basis. (I monitor the back end of my blog – which is a really fun thing to do. Besides having the front end that you get to see and read, I can analyze what’s happening with the blog.) My Chinese colleague’s name is Weiguo Kong, and he’s from Ji Nan, Shandong, China. He’s registered as a member of the Wine Bloggers’ Conference Members page, which continues to connect the world via the Internet.

My point? It’s a small world after all… and I find myself drawn in, like Alice in Wonderland, constantly. Keeping up allows me to be part of the trends, not someone watching from the sidelines. And, if you don’t keep up, the technology is happening so quickly, I can only imagine how speedily people not involved are going to be left behind.