Dave Donaldson

Hi, My Name is Arcware

Monday, April 21 2008

One of the best things about the MVP Summit is getting to meet and hang out with all the people you only know in the online world. But what's interesting is that if you use a handle in the online world that is not your actual name, people tend to get this sort of cautious look on their face when you introduce yourself with your real name.

For example, Arcware is my online handle. It's my blog address, it's my Xbox Live gamertag, and it's my Twitter username. Therefore, if someone follows me online in any form, it's entirely possible they have no idea what my real name is. So this week many times when I would meet someone and say "Hi, I'm Dave Donaldson", the person would get this look like "I have no idea who this person is", but then when I'd say "I'm Arcware" the light would go off and the connection was made.

Case in point: Steve Harman and I were in Phil Haack's and Scott Hanselman's ASP.NET MVC talk and afterwards I wanted to make sure I introduced myself to Phil, as we've exchanged emails and had a couple IM conversations before, but we've never met face-face. So after he finished talking to everyone else I introduced myself and he got that look, and then I said "Arcware" and he says (something to the effect of) "Oh of course, we've chatted before; I read your blog". And at that point we went off to find a table so he could show me some REST stuff with ASP.NET MVC, but that's a different topic.

Anyway, I'm not sure there was a point to all this, but it's something that made me think. Of course, according to Steve, it doesn't matter what name I use because people don't care who I am anyway :-)