Yesterday I met Nick Bendel in Sydney. I was “Unknown #54” in his #500lunches project — the man wants to have lunch with 500 complete strangers.
I filmed the whole trip from Newcastle to Sydney, shaky handheld and all, and did a little intro on Nick. He’s an interesting bloke. Also immediately started grilling me with questions, which — hang on, that’s supposed to be my job.
(There was a video. It lived on Vimeo. Whether the internet has preserved it is another question entirely.)
We talked about Australian politics, status and finding the right words when you’re trying to reach people, his three-year road trip across Australia — sleeping in the car, mind you — my own winding path to ending up here, and just life in this country in general.
My takeaway: offline beats online. Not even close. You might not collect as many contacts, but the shared headspace stays at a much higher level for much longer. Nick’s onto something.
Pretty sure I’ll run into him again. We’ll see if he puts on weight doing this…