Well it is and there’s nothing more we love than chance encounters Here we are with Walid at our usual 5th View Bar working away waiting for our next meeting there. At some point a guy sits right behind me and asks for the wifi key. 5th View are kind enough to share their wifi so I pass it on. He opens up his Mac Book Pro logs on, we briefly exchange a ‘Thank you – you’re welcome’ and we both get on with our work.
After about an hour and while we’re beavering away, Walid spots that someone has just put in a review for the place we’re actually sitting in. Taking a chance I just ask the dude behind if it was him. Long shot (no profile pic at that time), but worth a try. Well, it turns out that it was him! What are the chances of that? He had actually come the 5th View Bar after he had searched for ‘free wifi’ in TrustedPlaces and decided to contribute to the existing reviews.
It gets better. Ivan is actually a very interesting guy, living in San Francisco, doing some remarkable work through his two companies SustainableWebsites ,that provides carbon neutral web hosting, and SustainableMarketing that helps businesses be successful and environmentally positive.
Now for the last bit of this incredible story. Ivan co-works with Chris Messina and Tara Hunt and is also good friends with Ben Metcalfe, who both me and Walid met at the very early stages of TrustedPlaces through Ian Forrester’s geekdinners.
If this is not a tiny world I don’t know what it is

Ivan and Walid

[tags] Ivan Oats, 5th View Bar, Encounter, Citizen Agency, Ian Forrester, Ben Metcalfe [/tags]