col·lab·o·ra·tion Noun
1. The action of working with
someone to produce or create something.
Remember
when Astrid and I had the good fortune to meet up with Vision and Verb cohort, Petra, back in February? Well, chalk up
another one: our own virtual reality named CherryPie
becoming real in England!
Here's where the collaboration comes in.
Astrid and I met each other as virtual realities
on 31 August 2007 when we first commented on each other's Shutterchance blog that day. Actually, she started it. And
true to Blogging Ettiquette 101, I followed suit.
Just before that time in my
life, I had been typing away day after day on my other blog,
documenting all the traveling I was doing with my ex-partner. Half of
every month we lived in Atlanta. The other half we lived first in
Hannover, Germany, and later in Amsterdam. Because of all the pictures I
was taking, I wanted to start highlighting certain images in a bigger/better
space for just one image/day. Bigger images, fewer words.That's when I picked Shutterchance (SC), at the end of 2006, a photoblog originating in the UK. By the time Astrid joined the same photoblog and found me in 2007, I was already pretty "established" in the core group of Shutterchancers, building a sweet little community. In just a matter of time, Astrid, too, became part of the core.
Within 3 months of our first comments to each other, we had the chance to meet while I was in Amsterdam...and, well, you know how they say the rest is history! By 5 February 2010 we were legally married, living together here in the Netherlands.
That was last year, and for our honeymoon, we flew to England to be with Shutterchance friends, meeting up with 14 of them. THIS year, in celebration of our 4th anniversary of meeting virtually, with those first comments, we flew back to England and had another meet-up.
And this is where CherryPie comes in!
Our SC friends collaborated and planned a meet-up at Dudley's Black Country Living Museum on Sunday, 4 September, while we were visiting. CherryPie, from England, who visits and comments regularly on my SC blog, read about the meet-up and wrote me that she would like to join us, even though everyone else was from SC. She was willing to brave the unknown...just so we V&Vers could meet! And we did.
Are we happy or what?! (Astrid collaborated by taking the image.) Two women of a certain age met each other virtually on the WWW because certain other women conspired and collaborated to make a blog called Vision and Verb. Within a short matter of time, BINGO: they too/two were able to meet in real life.
My guess is this is not the last time it will happen...for me or for the rest of us. Don't you wonder who will be next? (Yes, Astrid and I are taking reservations should you like to make it to the Netherlands!)
