TechWag

: Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

Happy Birthday to Louis Gray, who is an unknown age today, what is interesting is to watch the social capital that Louis has built up over the year. I know I am a big fan of Louis, as he is one of those very cool people who try to build communities and groups within social networking. As a consensus builder, as a facilitator and as a supporter there are few like him, which is one of the reasons why he is on my personal list of extraordinarily cool people to follow.

This morning FriendFeed is a light with happy birthday wishes for Louis here, and he even got his own room for this occasion.

How did you meet Louis? Honestly, can you point to a time when Louis Gray was not on the internet and building up groups of people? He has a tendency to pull in people who are very smart, and then let them go wild with ideas on his blog, or on their own blogs with his comments. For some people there is no internet before Louis (and before you get all snarky thinking that I am waxing poetic, read this blog entry), there is even a FAQ on the Myth of Louis Gray.

He might not even know this mythos has built around him. Sorry for the shock Louis.

I first met Louis when I had been banned in Google after April 2008’s horrific hacking of Word Press that took out hundreds of thousands of blogs across the world. Louis not only took up the story, but posted some great stuff on his blog about the effect of being banned in Google. From there we have been working on a cross supportive projects with lots of comments like “love what you are doing” back and forth, and it has been extraordinarily fun to talk and work with someone who is as relaxed and as cool as Louis is. That is the nature of the process, you meet cool people on the internet, you like them, follow them, and for some reason Louis has not become dull yet .