Life’s been pretty busy lately, but I’ve been meeting up with tons of people at Diggnation, Web 2.0 and other events, on top of work.

But I’ve been fortunate to get to see some folks I either haven’t seen in some time or have never actually met in real life before. So call this my IRL Follow Friday edition.

@MsLaurenRae: I met Lauren waaaaay back this summer at the 140C conference after-party. She was brand-new to New York City, having graduated the journalism program at Syracuse University not long before. She was an unpaid intern at New York’s NBC news station and maybe a little overwhelmed by it all. We’ve kept in touch through Twitter and Digg and other media. We met up again IRL at Diggnation on Tuesday and we had a great time. She’s rockin’ it in the social media world, has a full-time job at the NBC affiliate (smart, folks!) and is becoming a bona fide New Yorker (that’s a compliment). It was a pleasure to hang out with her; she’s a woman to watch. (Her work Twitter is @NBCLocal, follow her on both if you live in New York.)

@NotifyNeal: Neal Rodriguez and I go way back on Digg. Fellow New Yorkers, we understand one another. Plus we both have really cute kids. Neal’s always into something new, whether it’s writing for The Huffington Post or vlogging about social media pioneers or any other variety of things. And he’s utterly unafraid to express his opinions – which are usually pretty right on the money (or, at least, amusing). We finally met up face-to-face at Web 2.0 yesterday and ended up talking for a couple hours about a whole bunch of different things. Good people.

@BCuban: Back when Brian was on Digg, he and I used to trade shouts on stories. I was quickly impressed that here was this guy who really didn’t have to do anything. His brother is a gazillionaire and owns the Dallas Mavericks and besides being a successful lawyer in his own right, he works for bro. But despite the fact that he didn’t HAVE to do anything, he did an awful lot. He developed a pretty well-written blog that tackles interesting topics and he’s done a lot of good things for some folks I know that most people don’t even know about. He’s now become, almost by accident, an expert in hate speech online and his background as a lawyer is excellent, as he can spell out to people exactly why what some groups are doing is perfectly legal, even if they’re not on solid moral footing.

@SHHHE: Priscilla Scala is the Web Product Manager for People Browsr. She splits her time between San Francisco and Sydney, Australia. Rough life. I met her at Blog World when I was asking her some questions about People Browsr. She was really nice and helpful, which one would expect from someone at a booth at a trade show. But we’ve linked up on Facebook and I was having a problem one day and pinged her. She tried the same thing I’d done and sure enough, she had the same issue. Soon after, she had PB’s engineers on the matter and it was fixed, lickety-split. Now that’s service. Plus, she’s just really nice.

@BaristaNet: Debbie Galant used to work for the New York Times. Now she runs Barista.Net, a pioneering hyper-local journalism site that — GASP! — actually turns a profit. The site covers three communities in Essex County, N.J., and people love it. They love that their cities are actually getting coverage of some sort and are more than happy to send in their photos and story tips. Barista.Net is the first place people turn to when they want to find out what happened with that fire in town. If you want to see hyperlocal done right, follow along. I’ve been at two conferences with her lately and came away impressed both times.

That’s it for this week. As usual, if you have suggestions of anyone you think I should follow, please say so in the comments section.