Who are you?

I’m a social media geek, entrepreneur, and working parent. I’m the Director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University, which is a new applied research centre that helps BC businesses tap the knowledge, skills and creativity of ECUAD’s faculty and students. I’m also the founder and principal of Social Signal, one of the world’s first social media agency.

What do you do for fun?

I make stuff. Sometimes I make stuff online (online communities, blogs, campaigns, videos). Sometimes I use the Internet to help me make stuff offline — like looking at mermaid pictures so I can sew a mermaid swimsuit for my daughter. Sometimes I make stuff without using the Internet at all (tonight I made fresh pasta!) but to be honest, that hardly ever happens anymore.

What is your favourite community and why?

The nonprofit technology community — which often refers to itself as NPTech. There’s no one site, event, or center for that community, but it has on- and offline gatherings all the time. The first nptech gathering I attended was the Aspiration nonprofit developers camp, and I had this experience of feeling like, oh, HERE are my people! Since then I’ve had that same experience in working with TechSoup to build NetSquared.org, in connecting with the Web of Change community, in attending NTEN’s nonprofit tech conference, and in connecting with all sorts of social change/nonprofit technologists. What I love about these folks is that we all intersect on two planes of geekiness: tech geekiness, and save-the-world geekiness. These are people who can have a serious conversation about the relative pathologies and strengths of the social justice and environmental movements, and then two minutes later switch into a passionate argument about the relative merits of iPhones vs. Android phones. I love them.

What is your superpower?

I am a truly amazing parallel parker. We drive a massive boat of a minivan, but I can get it into a parking space with less than a foot of room on each end — often much less. And what is particularly amazing about this skill is that it seems to be completely disconnected from every other aspect of my brain. I’m just an averagely competent driver, and I have pretty much zero spatial perception — I can barely get through a door without bashing into the frame, and in fact I can barely park in a regular parking lot space. But somehow I’m a parallel parking savant. I’ve literally had strangers applaud my parallel parking.

How do you use your superpower to build community?

There’s a close relationship between my parallel parking abilities and my sense of connection to our local community. Because I can parallel park in about 10 seconds, I often pop into a store for a quick errand on my way home. So my local shopkeepers see me a lot, and because I’m a friendly person, I tend to use those micro-interactions to exchange a little bit of news along with the purchase of some flowers, or kids shoes, or whatever it is. So much of our lives are lived in interaction with people who aren’t part of our closest circles of family, friends or colleagues, so it’s easy to stay anonymous. But when you choose to abandon that anonymity in favor of a real conversation — about how your respective businesses are doing, what your family is doing for vacation, or even about the party you’re shopping for — it strengthens our community just that little bit. Whenever you have a chance to connect to another person a little more deeply, take it: they’ll feel better, and so will you.

My three favourite things about Alexandra Samuel are…

1. She actually talked to us: when it comes to blogging, creative currency and building online communities, Ms. Samuel and hubby Rob Cottingham are second to none. And don’t even get me started on how her parallel parking story reflects this woman’s true humility and amazing sense of humour/social-justice (our chat about the community-building nature of parallel parking may or may not have taken more than an hour). Needless to say, The Potentiality is lucky to have been graced with her presence!

2. Alex is a bit of a history nerd, too. Sure, her PhD dissertation about “hacktivism” includes some powerfully awesome techno-geekishness, and it also addresses very important, very meaningful big picture socio-political issues and ideas that certainly set standards for internet pirates (and the people trying to stop them) everywhere. See, history does matter! And Alex will tell you that the past – from time to time – dictates our future.

3. Two words – entrepreneurial spirit: This young lady has it in spades, and, let me tell you, it’s always inspiring to meet someone who possesses this element of the human condition in a way the we know will bring innovation, inclusion and downright goodness to all that she touches. And that’s a beautiful thing!