Meeting Ramon Thomas

Last week I had the priviledge of meeting Ramon Thomas. Ramon is, as he puts it, a Speaker, Trainer, Evangalist, Blogger, and Author of “LinkedIn Lessons.” A few months ago Ramon delivered a course titled Blogging for Business at the Bandwidth Barn (for those of you who don’t know, the Bandwidth Barn is an ICT Incubator Hub in Cape Town, and my company is one of several ICT companies housed in this hub). Even though I was a blogger myself, and I also now train on blogging, I still wanted to attend Ramon’s course because I’m always keen to learn and discover new perspectives. Due to a scheduling conflict I could not attend though, but this was the start to our relationship.

Since then Ramon and I have been conversing via email, LinkedIn, and Facebook. What was really nice is that in October when I was delivering a seminar titled “Using LinkedIn and Facebook for Business,” Ramon sent me a PDF document and told me I can use it in preperation for my talk.

Now think about that. Here is someone whom I’ve never met in person. Here I am, a competitor in his industry. Yet he offers a helping hand. This is great! This is what makes Web 2.0 so exciting, because it uses the same underlying principles of authenticity, sincerity, sharing, co-operation, collaboration, etc. I call this new wave of the Internet to be the “Human Web” – because I feel it resonates from deep inside of us. We all want to share, we all want to contribute.

I was listening to a talk by Stephen Covey and he said that he had done research on “deathbed literature” – this was essentially many years of study of what people articulated whilst on their deathbed. Covey says that the study proved that at these last hours people were talking about contributions to society, quality time with family and friends, etc. No one spoke about how much time they spent at the office, or any of the other things which we allow to become priority in our lives, even though deep down we know that they aren’t.

Ramon shared with me some great tips and advice about the industry, and he actually left me with a lot to think about and a lot of homework. :) I welcomed this because I’m keen to learn and I’m easily teachable. Our industry is so fast-paced that it’s very refreshing to hear new perspectives and get another person’s insights into the technologies and other aspects of the industry.

I would like to believe that Ramon benefited from me in our discussions as well, and I hope that we are successful in our plans to do some projects together in the coming months. He is based in Joburg and I’m in Cape Town – so it’ll be exciting to see what we can pull off.

Ramon’s business is called NETucation. Be sure to download his Parent’s Guide to MXit, and his LinkedIn Lessons.

Lastly, you can view Ramon’s LinkedIn Profile here – it’s pretty extensive!