In New Zealand we like to talk up the interconnectedness of the little village that we all live in.
Because of our small population, it’s often claimed that everybody is connected to everybody else by fewer than six degrees of separation.
There is even a new mobile phone network claiming just two degrees.
So, let’s try an experiment and see if we can return some lost property in the process.
Yesterday we were driving home from Taupo and saw a camera fall off the roof of one of the cars we were following. Unfortunately we didn’t see which one, and anyway, by the time we stopped and picked it up they were long gone.
Here is one of the pics from the camera:
If you or somebody you know are in the photo please get in touch so I can arrange to return the camera to you.
If not, please re-blog, re-tweet, or otherwise forward this onto anybody who may have been driving South along the Desert Road yesterday.
If you include a link to this post then I’ll be able to work out how long the chain is, if the owner is found.
Thanks in advance for your help!
UPDATE (14th Dec, 1pm):
I’ve got an email from one of the people in the photo, so I’m pleased to say that the camera and (more importantly) photos will be back with them soon.
I’m astounded at how many people have linked to this post this morning, from Twitter and various other sites. Thanks to you it took less than 3 hours to find them.
It looks like there were a number of different ways that I am connected to the owner – but the first to produce a result was via Tarik, who subscribes to my blog and is a friend of the owner, so just two degrees of separation.
Thanks again to everybody who made the effort to help!
UPDATE (14th Dec, 2pm):
A couple of people have pointed out an NZPA story about this, currently on the Stuff home page:
Blog helps reunite owner with camera
Too funny!
And, so nice of them to provide a link back to this post … oh wait, they didn’t.
UPDATE (15th Dec, 3pm):
The camera has been returned in exchange for a bottle of 42 Below. A good result!
Neat idea. I suspect that Facebook would be a better network for achieving this than Twitter (not that you are trying to limit anything to one network).
If you don’t have any luck in the next 24hrs you could always try setting up a facebook page and distributing the call there.
Really interested to see how this works out.
Good on you Lance. I guess a heads-up to the mainstream media wouldn’t hurt either.
I think you meant “Rowan” there Simon. Shame WordPress doesn’t have edit your comment ability.
Great result Rowan
Oops! My bad. For some reason I always get you two mixed up. I’ll blame this one on Monday.
> For some reason I always get you two mixed up.
Ouch! ;-)
Sy, I always get Caucasians mixed up. You all look the same to me. :)
What a nice looking bunch. I really hope this works out for them! Good on ya. Retweeted!
ya i know him………….
Hi Rowan
Small world. The guy on the far right is John Wesley-Smith:
http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=john+wesley&init=quick#/profile.php?id=575312819&ref=search&sid=559464008.1519789580..1
Will fire him off a link to contact you.
Have a great Xmas,
Tarik
Hey Tarik -
Thanks for that. Hopefully I’ll hear from John soon.
Out of interest, how did you hear about this post, so we can track it back?
Cheers,
Rowan.
Heh, even the same shirt. Win!
He’s even wearing the same polo-shirt ????? :-)
Cool experiment!
Hi,
I am one mutual friend away from John on Facebook… is that one or two degrees of separation?
Great experiment… wonder if it would scale.
Like Hamish, I’m one degree away from John, and had Tumbled this earlier today. Glad the experiment worked, though I would also like to find out how Tariq came across you!
Goon on ya Rowan. I see the owner’s been found. NZ Stuff just did a report on the story:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/3158465/Twitter-helps-reunite-owner-with-camera
Awesome result.
And people are STILL trying to help through Twitter! Now that the wave has started, we just need to figure out how to stop it!
Well done. I see you’ve now made the media!
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/3158465/Twitter-helps-reunite-owner-with-camera
I received the RT of Twitter from several people, so the experiments seems to have been a great success.
Well Stuff.co.nz did link back to your blog, just not the post.
I wish New Zealand newspapers would start exploiting online as a proper channel and not just an archive of printed editions :(
Actually, in this case they have all just re-published an article written by NZPA.
As you say, credit to stuff.co.nz for adding a link when this was pointed out to them.
Hey was nice of you to help reunite the camera with the owners. heard about it on the yahooxtra site. And yes no link, but managed to find ur site anyway
Could I also recommend listing (for free) on http://www.lostorstolen.co.nz or http://www.lostorstolen.eu
In light of this story, the following article is amusing and practical:
http://www.andrewmcdonald.net.au/a-pictorial-guide-to-avoiding-camera-loss/
–Philip;