Identity — No Deputy CIO Is An Island

Chris King
Jul 20, 2017 · 2 min read

One of the things I’ve noticed with the ever growing reliance on technology, is that it all too easily replaces the simple things — such as a smile, a word or a handshake — with a digital equivalent.

Why waste your time on human contact when there is an emoji/emoticon to do it for you.

Never is this truer than on the conference circuit. One of the many, lengthy and too boring reasons to go in to, that I left LinkedIn initially, was that it was all too convenient for individuals and organisations to simply bypass the pleasantries of forced small talk in person. Instead, they wait a sufficient amount of time (within minutes of the conference ending) to ping you a connect request, usually with a message advising that they have the right solution to meet my needs.

If they had simply taken the time to chat to me at the event, as they were eyeing up the lanyard for my details to search for, they would have known that my needs are usually met; but I’m still happy to build a network in case that ever changes.

“So shall I put a reminder in to send you an email in six months’ time then?”

As someone who likes to talk, not small talk per se, but to get to know people rather than simply have a virtual roller deck, the notion that having a platform that instantly brings people in to your lives with assumptions based on organisations worked for or job titles earned, is counter intuitive.

Such communities are those I do not wish to be part of. So I left.

But now I am back. Advised to come back. Back with a desire to see my personal brand grow in as organic a way as is possible in a digital environment. To extend my reach to areas where people face the same challenges, have the same drive and ambition — who want to talk in plain language about how they are going about, what it is they do.

Breaking away, closing myself off is not going to help me achieve that. Even if the impersonal nature of it all is not the 21st Century Human I wish to be.

Time for me to work, to act, to exist in a different, digital way than before.

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Chris King

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You can find me at chrisraphaelking.com