Professional communications technologies and blurring the lines between colleague and friend.

Last week I was standing at the stage door of the theatre I work in, when an old friend of mine, not in the entertainment industry, happened to walk by. After exchanging the usual pleasantries I introduced him to a colleague of mine, but I didn’t use the word colleague, I said he was a friend who worked with me.

That started me thinking about the difference between friends and colleagues. Here are the dictionary definitions of both colleague and friend;

Colleague; a person with whom one works, especially in a profession or business

Friend; a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection

(Apple dictionary Version 2.1.2 (80.3) 2005-2009 Apple Inc.)

In the particular industry in which I work, Musical theatre, I discovered that these two normally separate relationships become intertwined and mixed up. This is largely due to a few different reasons;

• We are working with colleagues who share a passion, who are likeminded people and who have very similar experiences, surely all valid qualities found in friends?

• We work very unsociable hours and so our social behaviour normally takes place with each other instead of people who work a regular 9-5 job.

So what has all of this got to do with Professional communications technology?

I started thinking about my online persona or profile and how it reflects on me as a person and I realised that if I’m not at work with someone, and not socialising with them because they’re fast asleep by the time I finish work, then how do we define our friendships with the people we don’t work with? The answer is that my friends that don’t work 8 shows a week 5-11PM only really ever communicate with me using web based technology i.e. facebook, youtube etc. I can keep up to date with what’s happening in their lives via web 2.0 technologies. I discovered that even if I have not seen or spoken to them in years, I feel like I am still in touch with their everyday lives, I have watched their children grow, I have seen their holiday snaps, we’ve exchanged birthday messages and shared experiences and information.

The most interesting thing I realised though was that most of my interactions online are with my colleagues, and past colleagues. In Musical theatre there is typically a very high turnover of performers, meaning that I could be working with the same 30 people for 6 months and then all of a sudden be working with an entirely different set of performers and creatives for what could be weeks, months or years. The result of this huge migration in personnel is that we build up a huge network of other professionals without even realising it. These Colleagues quickly become friends and I then watch their children grow, look at their holiday snaps.

When I look at my facebook account for example, I would say that around 80% of my friends are people with whom I have worked or met through other professionals. This means that my social life is also my professional life and the two in fact go hand in hand. Web 2.0 technologies make it possible for me to keep in touch with these people and share information, ask advice, and gain other contacts.

10 years ago, this sort of professional communications would have been conducted in bars and restaurants, or in theatres and rehearsal spaces. Web 2.0 makes it possible for us to have these interactions constantly and, used properly, these web based technologies should help develop and grow our professional practices.