Business card thunderclap – and you

Hello, this is a slightly different post from me, a letter really, dear you…

I have a lot of business cards from people I have met over the last few years, I tend to be given them during or after a conversation and I keep them as I know that person had something in common with me and we spoke long enough to exchange cards.

I am a dullard and only bang on about three things:

• hack/modding days (Rewired State and Young Rewired State)
• coding kids (Year 8 is too late)
• women in technology (need more)

Therefore, I know that all the cards I have here relate to one or all of those subjects. I have exactly one foot of people who love the same things I love.

Being 41, I think – I do lose track: July 1971, I have pretty much decided what I want to do when I am a grown up. These are:

• be a good Mum
• keep the business alive for life so that I can still be doing it when I ‘retire’ and work with *lots* of people and friends
• relentlessly campaign to bring coding back
• actively grow a worldwide community of coding kids who can do with it what they will
• work tirelessly to significantly enhance the number of girls in computing and design by whatever means I have at my disposal
• open data, open borders, open business
• help to code a better world

Those seven things are my bucket list.

Now I am starting on this foot high pile of business cards. I am creating a spreadsheet, that only I have access to (this is not a commercial thing) of people I have met who are as passionate as me about these things.

This community of people, bound by the three passions I bore on about, will then be in one place and I will endeavour to explore how I can use this list of incredible people and their energy, to create a worldwide thunderclap of informed action over the next few years.

If you have never handed me your business card, but want to be a part of this thunderclap, email me emma@rewiredstate.org with your name, job, email address, passion and I will add you to the list.

This is not a commercial enterprise, it will take some time as it will be my spare time, but it seems a pretty good way to build on the energy in this space right now.

I am not missing the irony of the fact that last year I started the Silent Club to do exactly the opposite of this. But I am not suggesting that the Thunderclap be a physical networking thing, but it will be active not passive, and community-based – I am not ruling out us having a massive and brilliant party one day.