“Imaginary friends” is the term Nancy White has used to describe the hundreds of people she has developed relationships with in our shared virtual spaces. They are presumably not imaginary once we’ve met them as we have seen the flesh and blood. But we still cannot “imagine” the depth of people we barely know. This morning I learned of great and unimagined talents of two of my no-longer-quite-imaginary friends:

• Beth Kanter, social media activist, prolific blogger about nonprofits and social media trained as a classical flutist.
• Jon Husband, organizational architect of Wirearchy fame (and fellow AppGap blogger), is a champion long distance swimmer.

I’m not surprised that these talented colleagues have additional talents, just that I didn’t happen to know what these were. Of course we don’t have time in the (usually) scant hours we see people face-to-face.

And of course, that’s just what I learned in 15 minutes this morning reading blogs. What if I actually started looking?