Like many of you, I attended the #140Conf last week here in New York City at the 92nd Street Y. I found it interesting and inspiring, primarily because it reminded me of what this whole hyperlocal thing is all about, when you get down to the brass tacks. It’s the same reason I love serving as Outside.in‘s Community Manager, and the same reason I love Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the social media tools many of us use on a daily basis.

So, what did #140Conf remind me of? @JeffJarvis summed it up nicely:

The internet isn’t just any kind of connection machine, though. The internet is a connection machine used by human beings to create real, meaningful human connections. For many of us, the magic of Twitter (or Outside.in, for that matter) is not necessarily in its “pipes” (as our very own @StevenBJohnson will tell you, Twitter is infrastructure), but rather in its humanity:

For many of us, the tools we use on the internet are not about the technology, they’re about the people. At Outside.in, we’re not just surfacing stories using clever algorithms (which are pretty darn clever) — the stories we’re able to point to via our technology are meaningful to people because they’re about what’s going on in the places and communities that they care about.

Moreover, once you find out what’s going on in your neighborhood, whether it be via Outside.in or by chatting with your new-found friends on Twitter, you want to connect. It’s a natural human impulse to reach out in search of genuine, human connection. So maybe you go choose to go to an event you saw written about on a blog you found via Outside.in, or maybe you choose to attend a TweetUp or a MeetUp. After all, as MeetUp co-founder @heif demonstrated at #140Conf:

It’s true, too. Technology is powerful in its ability to create space for real experiences and change. But technology — especially the kinds used in social media– in a vacuum isn’t very powerful at all. It’s the people that create and use the technology that make technology so amazingly powerful. As one speaker put it:

I’ve seen it happen, too, but not only via Twitter. All technology can be life-changing if you’re open to the possibilities it could potentially help create in your life. As we often say here at Outside.in, Outside.in tells you about ‘What’s going on, where you are, right now.’ Twitter does this too, and that’s why so many of us love it. In fact, many of us love it so much that we’re willing to pay several hundred dollars to gather in a central place and talk about real time technology and why we love it so much. To be in community with one another. And there’s nothing virtual about that, it’s very visceral, and very real:

Which is really what it’s all about, right? Hyperlocal doesn’t happen without humanity. And, as @GaryVee so eloquently reminded all of us at the #140Conf:

I know all of us at Outside.in are glad we’re human, and not rocks– because people matter. And that’s why Twitter matters, why blogs matter, and why hyperlocal matters, because there are things happening — right now — in your city, your town and even your neighborhood, that really do matter.

Cheesy, perhaps, but so very true.

Happily, here at Outside.in, we’re able to take all of those online happenings and organize them in ways that make them even more timely and relevant to you. Because you’re not a rock, and you matter. Lucky us.