Spaghetti Testing | Peter Smith

Dancing Lights, an accidental discovery by lysergxi on Flickr

I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.
Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960)

Yesterday I spent a lot of time paying attention to WIREDcamp in Toronto.  It was a neat experience — because interesting stuff was happening, and also because of the long-distance, technologically facilitated way in which I participated from my cubicle in Ottawa. As I watched (and added to) the stream of tweets accumulating and the number of wiki pages growing, I learned about what my peers at the City of Toronto and the Government of Ontario were up to (and up against), and I was able to make some (weak) connections with public servants sharing similar interests. I acquired a lot great info that I will be saving for later use.

None of this was in the plan. When I arrived at work yesterday morning, I was going to be spending my day working my way through the backlog of tasks piled up on my desk. I had no idea that I would be spending a chunk of my time following along and interacting with the WIREDcamp peeps. I was totally unaware of the event until I just happened to see a few tweets with the #wiredcamp hashtag in my stream in the morning and got curious.

I love this kind of serendipity. Accidental discoveries and random events that end up having value. Sure it upsets the schedule, but for me it’s worth it.