Ejovi Nuwere

There are two things I’m doing in Tokyo this week. We are having a dinner party Friday and we are hosting a party at a popular nightclub in Roppongi Saturday. Please join both if you can.

六本木のベルファーレの前に出来たGRACEの中にあるferia（フェリア）のクラブで小さなパーティーを開きます。
会場に入る際、ejoviのパーティーに来ていることを伝えてくだされば入場料は無料です。お友達を連れて皆で遊びに来てください。

feriaについてはこちら。
http://www.clubberia.com/News/Detail/&id=187

場所　港区六本木7-13-7
03-5775-2949
ejovi: 090-6553-7404
Starting 12:00AM -
http://grace-roppongi.com/

東京でのちょっとしたパーティーのお知らせです。

TEXMEXな料理を楽しみながら、
初めてお目にかかる人からお久しぶりな人まで、
どんな方でも大歓迎です！
お友達を連れて遊びに来てください。

今週末の話ではありますが、
こられる方は、
こちらまでご連絡ください。

・mixi メール
・CONTACTページ（ejovi@ejovi.net)
・090-6553-7404

人数の把握をしたいので、前日の昼くらいまでに
連絡をください。
みなさんにお会いできるのを楽しみにしています！

日時　８月４日（金）午後８時～

場所　ＺＥＳＴ　ＣＡＮＴＩＮＡ渋谷
（東京都渋谷区神南1-6-8　神南カンパリビル2階 、
03-5489-3332 ）
http://www.zest-cantina.jp/jp/shibuya/home/location/0/printer

参加費　当日メニューなどを決めます。目安としては
飲み放題が2630円、コースは料理のみで2630円～。
当日の皆さんのリクエストでオーダーをしましょう！

それでは、当日楽しい時間を過ごしましょう！

Gather at is not a social network. Social networks treat individuals as nodes and I refuse to treat my friend as a node. Relationships are complex just like people and they can’t be simplified into bits and bytes. If you want strange friends sign up for myspace. You are guaranteed at least one friend, some guy named Tom. What does it mean to be one of Tom’s 96,981,816 friends?

I’ve realized two things so far during my trip to Japan. Directly inviting people you have never met before to a dinner is very nerve wrecking. Its actually against gather at rules to do this, but I did it anyway and now I remember why the rule exist. There is a lot of social pressure when you invite strangers. For one the stranger may look at other strangers in the group and wonder how much I value their friendship if I invited more than one person you didn’t actually know. Second, it throws off the vibe a little with the rest of the group. I’ve found that the ideal solution is to embrace the stranger, introduce them to the group explain that this is the first time meeting and tell everyone at the same time, why you specifically invited this person. You need to remind them that there is a reason for why you want to see them and let the group realize this. Lastly, because you don’t actually know strangers, they might not actually show up. When you invite people through friends there is more social pressure to keep your commitments. Strangers could care less. And generally its very nerve wrecking to have people not show up.

Something I felt while organizing gatherings here has convinced me more than ever that gather at is not a social network. I realized how the power of introduction can be so life changing. When you take an old friend, introduce them to another old friend and watch as those two slowly connect and become friends themselves. When you sit back and watch people in your social group having a great time, playing and interacting with each other its an amazing feeling. And for all its glory and hope the Internet will never be able to replicate the feelings I have when I see that.

Could I build a machine that allows me to plant flowers over the Internet? Sure, but I would never feel the joy of watching that flower grow, smelling it and seeing the complexity of its colors with my naked eye. Gather at can be a bit of a ego trip for the organizer because you become the center of your social circle but when you see these human interactions, its very emotional and appeals, at least to me, on a very different level. You can not nurture a node but you can nurture a friendship.

I’m in Japan, jetlagged but having a great time. I arrived Tuesday night and as I post this its Friday morning. Its been kind of crazy the last three days. We had a big dinner Wednesday with old friends, new friends and a few friends I met on Mixi.jp all mixed in together. Then I slept the entire day Thursday which would have been nightime back home and went out Thursday night with old friends and I’m still awake Friday morning.

I’ve just closed the ability to pre-register with gather.at. The site now redirects to my first gather blog entry which was actually my last ejovi.net entry. You can also get a preview of the new layout and design. Thoughts?

I arrived in Japan yesterday and I’m trying to make a conscious effort to relax. I’ve been in a state of panic over the last two weeks trying to make sure the gather.at site was ready. Its not, but everyone has been working super hard to make it so. I’d like to think it’s only a matter of hours away from being ready for public beta but I’ve decided to stop making predictions.

Why did I come to Japan to launch gather.at? The time I lived in Japan changed my life in so many ways. Before moving to Japan I had a very limited number of friends. I was always the youngest person at every company I worked at and I hadn’t gone to college. Two of the most common places people make friends outside of the friends they grew up with. I lost all of the friends I grew up with, we took different paths. My path lead me to moving out of the neighborhood very young, and before that I was too immersed in computers to really maintain the childhood friends I had. I always had this sense, after I got into computer that they didn’t understand me anyway.

But Japan was different. I easily made friends with foreigners who had absolutely no interest in technology. We had a common bond as fellow ex-pats. I made friends with Japanese guys in my gym who though we came from different cultures and backgrounds we had a common bond in martial arts. I made friends in bars too common bond? Alcohol, the grease of conversation. And we went out all the time. It was the single most social time of my life and when I returned to America I wanted to continue that lifestyle.

In Japan technology didn’t drive interaction for me, people did. Friends introducing each other. Going to sporting events, going to bars it wasn’t about technology it was about interaction. Human interaction. But in America I see a very different trend and it really upsets me. Myspace, orkut and all of these “social networks” continue to drive a wedge between human interactions. It started with semi-anonymous online dating and that trend has migrated to social networking websites too. The concept of treating your relationships as landing pages…I hate it.

Gather.at is about human interaction, around mutual interest through mutual friends. The application that helps organize this human interaction is online but that’s the only thing digital about it. It’s about me getting back to the feelings of joy I had in Japan. The pleasure I got from hanging out with friends and simply enjoying each other’s company.

So obsessed with work lately I’ve forgotten what that feels like. I’d forgotten why this was so important to me, and I needed to return to Japan to remember. But the dinner I had in NYC before I left, the dinner I had with friends last night in Osaka and the many more dinners I have coming up…they are slowly reminding me about why I started this project and why I am convinced that to have and nurture 10 real friends is more valuable than 1000 virtual. To be around friends, that’s why I started this.