(photo by Phil Sands)
A friend of mine who is part of a new photo agency, Makoto, wrote to me from Damascus the other day in need of emergency help with an ailing website.
To cut a long story short, he needed a new mechanic to open the bonnet of the the agency’s stalled site and get it started again. He emailed me, I dropped out a tweet and within two minutes @QuiteXander (Xander Cansell) came to the rescue. I have only met Xander a few times, I was aware he is involved in some pretty exciting things but had no idea he was so adept a coder.
Xander along with Ben (@IHateMornings) are now working on Makoto’s site for a few months, doing some coding and design stuff, keeping them healthy while their photographers in Syria and Afghanistan worry about getting their jobs done.
As an aside my friend, the one who wrote asking for help, is a Luddite; doesn’t have a TV, doesn’t deal with anything more advanced than email, He was always of the view that social media networks were a diversion, frivolous. They can be those things, of course. But maybe this little incident will convince him that at times their effectiveness is unrivaled. Makoto was up and running within a day of his plea to help arriving in my inbox. How else could this have been sorted so quickly.
This is important work.
From the small talk through the business to the deep and meaningful. I am honoured and feel lucky to have some of the people that live in my network.
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