As I was doing background research for my conversation with Léa, I learned that our digital social circles overlap. My discovery that we share a mutual friend–thanks, Facebook and LinkedIn–opened up a wide-ranging conversation into our shared interests, as revealed bit by bit by Léa’s digital footprint. Here’s a podcast-style summary of our conversation along those lines.

CLICK HERE FOR PART 1 (SOUNDCLOUD)

Our conversation, though, ventured beyond our shared hobbies. We talked at length about her longtime work on issues related to gender-based violence and her transition into tackling a similarly vexing challenge: that of radicalization of Islamists in Germany. Her studies have taken her around the world and back again: With NGO positions in countries including Bosnia & Herzegovina, Rwanda, and Australia–not to mention study-abroad stints in the US, UK, Australia, Tanzania, Kenya, and Egypt–she has seen and done a great deal, all fastidiously tracked on her LinkedIn page. But I noticed that one little part seemed at first glance to be slightly inaccurate. Her work experience says that she worked with the NGO Search for Common Ground in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through March 2013. However, I dug up a November 2012 article from Walsroder Zeitung, her hometown German newspaper, saying that she’d been evacuated from the country. Why was there this discrepancy? Was it a discrepancy at all? Had she been evacuated, only to return to finish up in March 2013? Surely LinkedIn was hiding some fascinating details–and it was. Listen below for more:

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2 (SOUNDCLOUD)

In all, I’m struck by how examining a conversation partner’s digital footprint beforehand can influence conversation–for good or for ill. Revealing that we had a mutual friend on Facebook, for instance, was like an invitation from the “real world” to talk about that friend, easing us into conversation in a highly effective way. Other revelations, however, were more jarring. Léa was surprised or slightly embarrassed that I’d found some digital breadcrumbs (e.g. an uncomfortably enthusiastic review of her performance in a play), and in one instance, she’d forgotten she’d even created one of the online resources I found. Without warning, I asked her near the end of our conversation if she was a fan of the Trina Paulus book Hope for the Flowers. Shocked, she said yes, utterly confused as to how I knew that. It turns out that her fling with Myspace must have been near-instantaneous. Her old account, named “hopefortheflowers,” is still up and running, but she couldn’t remember making it–a digital fossil from an earlier time, I suppose.

It also hits home to me just how pervasive our digital footprints can be.