Meet Rachel.

I met Rachel Weidinger nearly a year ago at N2Y3 and we've been in relatively close touch ever since. Since our initial meeting, she became the organizer of Net Tuesday San Francisco, taking over organizational duties upon Brit Bravo's departure. She's been doing a bang-up job since.

(In fact, Rachel hosted a Net Tuesday that I presented at back in September. She is a non-pretentious foodie and she led me to some of the best fried chicken in San Francisco, a suggestion for which I will be forever grateful. When in San Francisco, ask Rachel for any/all food advice.)

On her site, Rachel explains:

I probably want to talk to you. My preferred method of communication is dinner table, but you can also catch me on Twitter.

All of the specific odds and ends about her can be found here - like stuff about her work with Common Knowledge and her partnership with Stowe Boyd's /Ground project.

Rachel is a fabulous conversationalist. We talked a bit about Twitter last week and she explained:

In popular US culture we've been moving to a place away from authentic interactions and into prescribed mass media. There's even been a backlash like, "There aren't enough children eating at the dinner table with their parents and it is a bad thing in our society." In my mind, this movement [away from authentic interactions] is totally lame [laughs]. I don't think anybody really did it on purpose, except maybe people who were trying to make a whole bunch of money, but I don't feel like the average US citizen was like, "I'm going to stop having authentic interactions in my life," but we kind of got there and that's kind of what happened.

She explained that while she was living in Napa she joined the Elks Club upon trying to find an answer to the question, "Where are all my young people at." While she enjoyed a lot of the community that was offered via participation, she looked at the values of the organization and felt as though something was missing.

"I'm looking for my Elks, and they're on Twitter," she concluded.

"Granularly chose-able ubiquitous ambient intimacy"

We talked a bit about why this might be the case, and what exchanges, exactly, make Twitter a worthwhile medium for her. We discussed the magic of what she's seen referred to as "ambient intimacy," and she added onto the term the qualifier "ubiquitous" (as in "ubiquitous ambient intimacy") - a nod to the mobile element of Twitter- and later went further to add another qualifier - "granularly chose-able" (as in "granularly chose-able ubiquitous ambient intimacy") - a nod to being able to opt in or out whenever one pleases.

(It should really be noted that Rachel found all of the additional qualifiers funny, and that she wasn't going out of her way to sound like a snooty know-it-all, just in case you for some reason thought all of this qualifier-addition makes her sound silly. What I love about Rachel is that while she is quite serious about the things that she loves, she is indeed very silly and she embraces it accordingly).

So if you haven't yet checked out a Net Tuesday San Francisco - and I shouldn't have to tell you that you should, but - you should. Beyond that, though, definitely take advantage of the opportunity to meet its organizer Rachel, who is clearly all sorts of fun. Ask her about where her young people are at, and her adoration of Twitter. Ask her about her take on ambient intimacy and ubiquitous ambient intimacy, and granularly chose-able ubiquitous ambient intimacy. Ask her where to get super rad fried chicken, because she knows where the super rad fried chicken is at. Rachel is awesome and you'll be a better person for knowing her.