More than a decade of Internet frienship - how I finally met Augusto Pinaud in person!
😎Life,⭐️Featured
Virtual isn’t real. Online meetings aren’t the same as being in the same physical space. Long distance relationships never work. Right? Maybe. If that’s what you want to believe. I think by running my #NoOffice company Nozbe for the last 16 years I’ve proven that you can run a viable, creative and a very profitable business completely remotely. And recently I’ve realized that over more than a decade I’ve developed a close friendship with Augusto Pinaud even though that until last month, we’ve never met in person and all this time we’ve been only communicating online while living a literal ocean apart.
We met as GTD (Getting Things Done) enthusiasts back in 2009
I just checked. We met through Tara Rodden Robinson as they wanted to interview me for the GTD virtual study group and @context podcast. This was back in mid 2009, so almost 14 years ago.
The reason for the interview request wasn’t just my application Nozbe but also my then-published Productive! Magazine.
Over next few years we collaborated on the Productive! Magazine
As fellow productivity enthusiasts we clicked. I invited him to appear on the cover of Productive! Magazine #14. Later I invited him to help me out and be the chief editor of the Spanish version of the magazine.
Later we wrote the #iPadOnly book together
We both were passionate about the iPad and the possibility of working on it full time. In fact, I’m writing these words on the iPad Pro 13” with magic keyboard. We were ahead of our time with this. I emailed him this message:
And we co-wrote #iPadOnly book which you can now read for free online.
I believe that writing this book was the moment when we really became great friends. We’ve been working on the book the first half of 2013, so exactly 10 years ago.
Friends forever!
Over the next years we’ve been keeping in touch and working together on things. Some of my most memorable moments are:
- When we were doing our best promoting the #iPadOnly book
- When we were launching the Productive! Magazine in Spainish
- When he was telling me I should finally hire a VP of Product for Nozbe
- When he was helping me figure out the way of launching Nozbe Teams which now finally became the new Nozbe
- When we’ve been geeking out on Anything But Idle
- When he helped me launch Nozbe Expert Program as well as the Nozbe Affiliate Program
- Or when we’ve been enjoying casual evening Zoom calls while sipping Limoncello and talking about life.
Over the years our children have grown, our lives have been changing and we’ve been growing our friendship while being in touch only online.
Even though I did travel to the USA several times over the span of all these years, we never got a chance to meet. Somehow we were always too far from each other.
We finally met in New Jersey last month!
Now that the COVID-19 pandemic finally subsided, I finally had a chance to travel to the USA across the pond from Europe. Now that he moved to New Jersey and I had a straight flight to the New York City, we finally had to make it happen and meet in person.
We got to hang out, geek out when visiting a local Apple Store (see picture above) and just enjoy each other’s company.
We also shared an Easter meal together:
And you know what?
We just felt like we’ve been hanging like this all these years. Like it wasn’t the first time we’ve met in person. It was so easy, so natural, so chill.
Turns out you can build a deep friendship online!
This is the true beauty of the Internet. You can meet people from all over the world and you just can get to know them, become friends and enjoy each others’ company even though you don’t get to see them often or sometimes at all.
And when you do get to see them, it’s just so normal. You feel like you’ve been hanging out like this all this time.
And that’s amazing.
Thank you for your friendship Augusto, and here’s to many more years of friendship, productivity and… Limoncello!