Contactivity. Technology helping you to be a social animal while on the move. Staying connected to your existing relationships and being able to spot the opportunities for new ones. Who is near you, in your proximity, who is in your general location, and how can I share with them and my relationships at home and elsewhere. Plazes and Imity are examples of aspects of this. Contactivity is social connectivity. It needs technological connectivity but is a totally different beast.

by KM expert Ton Zijlstra in his Reboot 8 Themes V: Relationships, Visualization, Contactivity post.

The location, geopresence aspect of social capital.

While the desktop editions of Skype let you "hardwire" your time zone in your user profile, this is less helpful to laptop users and no help to mobile users. Wouldn't it be lovely if:

• Your mobile phone's GPS shares lat/long data with selected Skype contacts?
• Skype alerted you when some contacts are newly near you?

This might show up as services or features like:

• Contact groups sorted by distance
  • Who is near?

• Contact group of people far away from their home base (e.g. more than 100km)
  • Who is traveling?

• Contacts newly near you (location changed) that you haven't spoken with in a long time.
  • Which relationships should I renew over lunch or coffee?

• SkypeFind lists visited by contacts (even if they never post or comment)
  • Voting with your feet, even if you never use SkypeFind

• SkypeFind auto-prompt for reviews
  • What do you think of the 10 places you visited this week? Just rate them, please.

• Public Chat Directory
  • Most public chats won't have a geographic focus, but some will. Neighborhood chats. Apartment building chats. Local businesses, city offices, clubs and associations. Find and join them.

• First Life Event Lists
  • Blend your Skypecast directory with offline events. Bring in geocoded listings from Eventful and Upcoming or other iCalendar and hCalendar services. Music, lectures, business meetings, conferences, parties. Discover, call and go.

Technorati tags: skype, contactivity, plazes, gps, geocoding, skypecast, skypecasts, proximity, mobile, imity, tonzijlstra, ton, reboot8, geopresence