On quitting the 'like' button

I came across this article recently, and it struck a chord with me. So I decided to quit the 'like' button myself for a while and see what happened. And not just on Facebook, but on my company's intranet social spaces, too.

This 'like' thing is rather weird isn't it? I bestow upon your post my approval with my mighty 'like' button. Wait. What?

This puts me in mind of earlier conversations I've had about blog comments. Stephen Downes once said in a blog post I now can't find (it was a long time ago), that he didn't think he needed to respond to every comment on his blog posts. That they were perfectly able to stand in their own right and he wasn't arrogant enough to believe they needed validation from him. That has stayed with me (obviously), and when I read the article about the 'like' button, it occurred to me that it was a similar thing. Quite apart from the fact that the bots at Facebook towers are probably building a profile of me based on the things I like.

It can be a bit fraught. If five people comment on a post of yours, and you've 'liked' the first four, do you feel pressured to 'like' the fifth even if you don't like it? If you follow me.

It reminded me a bit of my grandfather. Bear with me. When I was little, my grandfather had this little noise he would make. Somewhere between a grunt and a 'yeah'. It meant "I know that you've spoken. I don't know what you've said, and I'm not really interested. But I acknowledge that you have addressed me." Since I was (you'll be astonished to learn) a chatterbox, I heard that noise a lot. A lot.

Isn't the 'like' button a bit like that?

So this is what I'm doing instead:

I will either engage with something enough to take the time to post a proper comment on it. Or I will let the post/comment stand on its own merit. The 'like' button is off limits for a while. And several of my Facebook friends have decided to join me.

How about you? Shall we turn this into a growing social experiment?

Choosing whom to follow on Twitter

I can always tell when there has been a learning event somewhere in the world, because I suddenly get a whole raft of new Twitter followers coming through at once, instead of the trickle that is the daily norm.

I don't use any auto-refollow tools, so there is always a bit of a lag as I catch up, because I go through the list 'by hand' and decide whom to follow (or not).

I tweeted about this after the recent Learning Technologies conference and was asked:

This is a question I get quite often, so let me give a comprehensive answer in a space that affords me more than 140 characters for the purpose.

First, and almost without saying - no spambots, as David mentions. It isn't always easy to tell a spambot right off the bat - they're getting devilish smart. But a few indicators are:

• Their names are often firstname+number. So Maxine1234 (or something like that) would have me doubting her humanity from the outset. However, I do have some Twitter friends whose names are something along those lines, so it's just a rule of thumb, not an absolute.
• They tweet the same flipping thing (or a few very similar flipping things) over and over and over again.
• They have no biography.
• They follow thousands of people (and may be followed by a similarly large number), but have only ever tweeted a handful of times.

Second, I like to see a bio, and the more interesting or quirky it is, the better. For example, my Twitter friends' bios include such lines as:

• Dad, entrepreneur, and Star Wars freak (@dbswe)
• I'm all about learning, fashion, football, social media + cricket, not always in that order :) (@kategraham23)
• Often laughing. Always learning. Collaborating nonstop. You ready? (@marciamarcia)
• I'm passionate about training, L&D. I also bake fantastic chocolate cake. (@susiefinch)

You see? You know something about these people already. You know that Dave (@dbswe) takes being a Dad more seriously than he takes himself. You know that Kate defies stereotypes with girly girl interests and a love of sport. You know that Marcia is all systems go, and she'll take you with her if you give her half a chance. You know that Susie doubles as a homebody and would be good company over a cup of coffee. Real people. Just like you.

I also prefer a link to a blog/website, so I can get an idea of what floats your boat. If there is no bio or blog link, only a kick*ss series of tweets will get me following you.

If you're following me on my @learninganorak account, it must be because we share a passion for learning (I have a personal account for more eclectic musings). So I will visit your page, and see what you tweet about. If you only ever tweet quotable quotes, homilies and truisms forget it. I want to know what you think! If you only ever retweet (RT) what someone else has posted, hmm... probably forget it, too. I can read those things first time around. Don't get me wrong, I use the RT feature a lot myself, and I appreciate it when other people do, too. But if that's all you do, what value are you adding?

And if you only ever tweet about one narrow subject, such as LMSs or PSS or whatever, then after a couple of days, I'll probably have read everything you're likely to say.

Twitter is a conversation. A hectic, everyone-talking-at-once conversation, and it is my number 1 personal learning tool. So... contribute already.

I don't choose to follow only those people who agree with me. How boring would that be? I could sit at home and talk to myself (yes, you're right - I do that, too!), but if you're going to disagree (with me or anyone else), be grown-up about it. I can't be doing with name-calling, peeing contests (to put it politely) and slanging matches.

I think that's about it, really. I know it sounds like a lot, but I'm not really that precious. I do follow over 900 people, and keeping up with them is a tall order. How people manage with thousands, I have no idea! Maybe I'll find out one day.

On why we should be generous

Those who still adhere to an older business model are puzzled by those of us who engage in the various social spaces with people who, in effect, are our competition. Happily, we advise each other on the best way to tackle this or that problem, and we take uncomplicated pleasure in the knowledge that we have helped one another.

Today, courtesy of a new Twitter follower, Indira Balki, I was reminded of this poem which reflects much of this attitude:

One Star Fell and Another by Conrad Aitken

One star fell and another as we walked.
Lifting his hand towards the west, he said–
–How prodigal that sky is of its stars!
They fall and fall, and still the sky is sky.
Two more have gone, but heaven is heaven still.

Then let us not be precious of our thought,
Nor of our words, nor hoard them up as though
We thought our minds a heaven which might change
And lose its virtue, when the word had fallen.
Let us be prodigal, as heaven is:
Lose what we lose, and give what we may give,–
Ourselves are still the same. Lost you a planet–?
Is Saturn gone? Then let him take his rings
Into the Limbo of forgotten things.

O little foplings of the pride of mind,
Who wrap the phrase in lavender, and keep it
In order to display it: and you, who save our loves
As if we had not worlds of love enough–!

Let us be reckless of our words and worlds,
And spend them freely as the tree his leaves;
And give them where the giving is most blest.
What should we save them for,–a night of frost? . . .
All lost for nothing, and ourselves a ghost.

I have nothing to add to that.

Job hunting with social media

As you know, I have been job-hunting lately. And I've been thinking about the history of job-hunting... or at least my experience of it.

My first few jobs were part-time or holiday affairs while at school and drama school, and they were a case of word of mouth. I was advised by someone in the know that John Orr's was looking for holiday sales staff for the Christmas rush. I was advised that Communikon School of Performing Arts was looking for part-time drama teachers. I was advised that the provincial board needed adjudicators for drama eisteddfods. This was in the very late 70's and early 80's.

Once I graduated from drama school, and while I was waiting to be discovered by Hollywood (or at least the SABC), I found a couple of jobs in the small ads of the local newspaper. This was in the early 80's.

My first office job was found via newspaper ads, again. But this time, it was a feature ad. The same applied to my next office job.

In much the same way (feature ads in the newspaper), I found a job at a theatre agency in Cape Town, but I treat this one separately, because this job led to my getting a few photographic modelling assignments and a contract as a TV presenter (at which I sucked, royally).

During this phase, I met and married my husband. For a year after this, I tried and failed to find a steady, 'proper' job. Of course, my efforts were never enough to please the in laws, who felt that I was sponging off their son. This was in the late 80's, and my search consisted of cold-calling and responding to newspaper ads. It was soul-destroying. But I took every opportunity to upskill, and did run the occasional computer applications training course (as they were then known) during the dry spell. This was to prove the best move I'd ever made. After nearly a year, I finally landed a job working in a learning centre... and found my vocation. The company that had set up the learning centre was way ahead of its time for the market, and the initiative didn't take off. I found myself back on the job market within 16 months. But this time, I had built up something of a network and a reputation.

I went freelance. I tapped the network for opportunities, and they came. I worked as a freelance training consultant until we left South Africa, fitting my career around my children. During this time, I got to work with some of the big names of South African industry, as well as taking on ad hoc overflow work for specialist training organisations. I was offered a few chances to take full-time posts with some of my clients, but, with my husband's full support, I opted not to accept them. I will never regret having been able to be a hands-on Mom, even though it almost certainly impacted my career development.

When we arrived in the UK, in 1999, I took a year out to settle the family in to our new home. By the time I started job hunting again, it was via the local newspapers. I took a part time job at an FE college. We had pretty much decided that I would go back to work full time only once both our sons were in secondary school. However, I continued to scan the papers for opportunities. When a 'perfect fit' full time job came up earlier than expected, we decided to take the plunge. The office was 3 miles from home. I could make the trip in 7 minutes. Our kids were 11 and 9, and would be home alone for 1.5 hours each afternoon. We lived in a safe neighbourhood. This was 2002.

During this period, the Internet began to come into its own as a place to go job hunting. I found and applied for my next job via the world wide web. I felt so modern! This was 2005.

In 2008, the wheels fell off and I found myself at a crossroads. I decided to take the plunge and go back to being self-employed. But it had got a whole lot more complicated since my last shot at it. And I was under pressure to earn more, because our commitments had been based on what I had been earning while working for 'the man'. That was in 2008. I did look for alternatives, and didn't find a whole heck of a lot, so the Learning Anorak was launched.

Now that that venture is coming to an enforced close, I am job hunting again.... and it looks very different.

I have automated searches in place with several of the biggest recruitment agencies. Almost daily, there are jobs I can apply for. Sadly, as I have mentioned before, the first-line screeners are not the very clued up. They are utterly unable to identify that skills in X map across to requirements for Y. So I get turned down for a lot of jobs I could do blindfolded... sometimes within minutes of submitting my application.

I also check out the online vacancies pages of some of the organisations I am consciously targetting. This is a huge plus.

But I am also able to be far more pro-active than before. When I was job hunting way back in 1988/9, I was at a loss as to what else I could do. Other than cold-calling and responding to ads, what was there? Especially in a city in which I was unknown (ergo, no network). This time around, I have put feelers out across the network, which is global. I have made my position known on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. I have written a blog post. And all of those have taken several hits.

The support from my beloved community, while thus far not yielding anything, has been enormously comforting. Harold Jarche even created a hashtag for me on Twitter (#YesYouShouldHireKaryn). Okay, so it didn't get a lot of take-up, but the fact is that he did it. It was a very kind gesture from someone who has become a real friend, even though we have never met face to face. This is the beauty of the network. And it didn't go unnoticed. Someone, a complete stranger to me tweeted something to the effect that he didn't know who this @karynromeis person was, but she must be worth hiring, based on the support she's getting from Twitter "big hitters".

I have had several job offers, actually, but all of them have been spam, bar one. The one genuine job offer I received was at a lower rate of pay than I was getting 5 years ago, and involved 3 hours of commuting time every day. It wasn't easy to pass up on the bird in hand, but I decided that I had to. The level of sacrifice by my whole family simply wouldn't be worth it. Fortunately, my incredible husband has been staunchly supportive. He simply will not have me sell myself short. He has always had more faith in me than I do in myself.

It remains to be seen if this method of job hunting yields something more quickly than previous methods have done.

Watch this space.

Amber Naslund on the ROI of social media

Here is a woman whose point of view very closely reflects my own. There are some things that simply cannot be quantified.

I can’t believe nor understand how many companies can’t also accept the fact that deeper and broader personal connections can net stronger business ties, too, whether or not you can capture the data proof points that bear that out. It’s been that way since the dawn of time.

Read the whole post here.

On being Google-able

Today my Twitter stream includes this observation from Rob Brown.

Being anonymous does not serve your purposes. If people find nothing about you online, they move on to the next candidate.

I was surprised that this has been his experience. It is certainly not mine. Although my CV contains links to various parts of my digital footprint, I have found that these are seldom followed. When applying for jobs or bidding for work, I openly invite people to research me online to gain fuller picture of the person behind the application/bid/tender.

On one occasion, I applied for a particular job at a large organisation which claims to be progressive and innovative. The man who would line manage the role set up a phone interview. In preparation, I googled him, and partway into the interview, I asked a question based on something I had learned from this research.

He was slightly taken aback and asked, "How did you know that?"
"I googled you," I explained.

There was a pause.

"You did what?"
"I googled you. I did a search on your name on Google. I had already researched the company, and I wanted to learn a bit about you. After all, we would be working together."

The whole interview changed after that. Not only had he not done any research into me, but he was affronted that I had taken this bold step. To him, what I had done was tantamount to stalking. I might as well have rifled through his garbage can and taken photos of his wife collecting his kids from school.

I wanted to have the argument with him. To explain that, if you put stuff out there in public space, it is with the tacit understanding that people can and will access it. I wanted to point out how much more he could have known about me, had he reciprocated.

But there seemed to be no point. There was no way he was going to hire me after that. Besides, I wasn't sure that there would be space for me in an organisation which didn't seek to leverage every available means of effective talent management.

Bearing in mind that I work in the field of online learning, and the beneficial use of social media in the workplace, you would think that my (very) public profile would take a lot of hits from people considering doing business with me.

I wish.

Downes on change

This article by Stephen Downes in the Huffington Post is getting a lot of exposure. He explores personal learning environments, networks and knowledge (PLENK).

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know exactly who Stephen is. The problem is, while there are pockets of people who are familiar with his work and actively engage in the debate sparked by his posts, there are great swathes of people who should be thinking along the lines that Stephen addresses, but don't... and have no idea who he is, either. As a result, they continue to churn out the same old same old.

The expression goes, if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got. These days, with change and progress being as fast as it is, I think if you do what you've always done, the best you can possibly hope for is what you've always got, but even that will be a stretch.

Hopefully, articles like this will take the ideas into the mainstream.

Twitter v IM: a micro-reflection

Donald Clark shared via his Facebook status that "while 7 out of 10 teens use social networking websites like Facebook, only 1 in 12 teens use Twitter - Pew Internet and American Life Project - survey middle of last year 12-17 year olds."

I located said report and found it interesting reading. You might, too, if your life includes teenagers.

One caveat I found quite telling was that "the question wording for teens is quite different from how the question was posed to adults so the results are not strictly comparable."

That said, it seems that only 8% of online American teens use Twitter, while the figure for adults is 19%. It should be noted, however, that the figure for adults varies hugely across different age bands, showing a steady decline from the 37% of 18-24 year olds to just 4% of those over the age 65. So it seems that between their 17th and 18th birthdays, American teenagers experience the sudden urge to make the shift to Twitter. I wonder why? The report suggests that it "may be partially due to our question wording capturing status updates on social networking sites."

But enough of that, I wanted to focus on the 'only 8% of all teens' bit.

My own teenagers are avid users of instant messaging and have been for several years, now. Their usage patterns would not be supported by Twitter.

For example:

• They use a lot of emoticons
• They use extensive font formatting
• They frequently use more than 140 characters per message
• They conduct huge numbers of 1:1 conversations simultaneously, sharing private thoughts they would never dream of sharing in a single, multi-user stream (connected in parallel, rather than in series?)
• They change their user names often, using these as a mini status to reflect their mood, their (frequently) changing romantic status or a significant event in their lives
• They use web cams as part of their conversations (and some parents would be appalled to know some of the uses to which their teenagers put these cameras!)

Of course, this is just a single snapshot, based on my observations of my own sons and their friends, and does not constitute research. But I throw my snapshot into the pool to be aggregated with the rest of the fragments.

Graeme Duncan suggests (on Donald's FB page) "My hypothesis is kids use these media as communication tools but like it to be network building and relationship building. Twitter is a broadcast media not a two way communication channel whilst FB, MSN, etc etc are profile builders and also communication channels."

I have to say that I use Twitter to engage in conversations with people. Many of my messages start with @someone-or-other. But Donald has a view on that, too, to wit: "Spot on Graeme - Twitter is boomeresque (new word!) in that it plays to our need to either receive or transmit, not share and engage in dialogue. Even on Facebook, we're the exception to the rule -far too many boomers simply post their own entries and don't respond - you two [that would be Graeme and me] are very much the exceptions."

I'm trying to decide whether to forgive him for calling me a "boomer". I'm too young for that label, and he should know it ;o)

So there!

It's official. Facebook users are better employees. It's been researched and everything.

But seriously, the article makes for interesting reading. Check it out.

How the social network operates

Christy Tucker and I have been social media friends for a while now. Our association started in the blogosphere - reading and commenting on the same posts, reading and commenting on one another's blogs... that kind of thing. Now we are connected in several spaces. Thanks to Facebook, our relationship has become somewhat more personal. There is a genuine element of mutual caring, although we have never actually met. There are a few people who fall into this category and, were I to start naming them, I would inevitably leave someone out, so I won't go there. You know who you are!

Anyhoo, let me relate an incident that sums up how the whole social media thing works.

At 22:35 BST on Friday, Christy sent me a message on FB, with a photo attached. The message read:

OK, I know this is a random question, but you've had a knack for identifying plants for Stephen Downes. It's a long shot, but do you know what this flower is? One of my friends just bought her first house and this flower is growing there. She doesn't know what it is, and I'm useless at identifying plants. If you can't, no worries--I already stumped my mom, so you'll be completely excused for not being able to ID a random American flower. :)

It is true, I have twice managed to identify plants for the Downes from pictures he has published, but on this occasion, I was stumped... for a moment.

I published the picture to my FB profile page at 22:37 with this message:

Can anyone ID this plant for an American friend?

At 22:44, a response came from an English friend who happens now to be living in the US, asking what country the plant was growing in (if I remember correctly, she has a background in horticulture). Silly me, I had identified the friend as American, but neglected to indicate that she was still living there... as was the plant. With that point cleared up (also at 22:44), the answer didn't take long to come back:

OK, me again. It's a lamium (member of the nettle family). If you google 'lamium purple flower varigated' it comes up with a variety looking exactly like it called Purple Dragon. The thing about lamiums is that they spread all over the place by underground roots, just like nettles do. Mints are also in this family and, unless you want a whole ... Read moregarden full, you plant them in the pot in which they come to stop them spreading!! Lamiums are sold by garden centres as they grow well in the shade and the varigated ones brighten up a dark corner but they often don't come with a warning about the need to contain them! Hope that's helpful.

At 22:53, I sent a message to Christy saying

Okay Christy, there's an answer for you on my profile page. Check it out.

And that, dear friends, is a social network in action.

Twitter grader... yup!

I got a message from a new follower on Twitter today, telling me he had found me on Twitter Grader. I followed the link, entered my username (karynromeis) as directed and was presented with this:
It seems I am currently ranked 42,441 out of 2,289,735. Now I'm not sure what that means, exactly, but I suspect that, at the very least, you should probably be tugging your forelock about now! Apparently, I am a member of the Twitter elite in my county (how's that forelock?).

Most importantly of all, my grade is 98.3 out of 100.

D'you think this is like golf, or sprinting where a low number is better, or like a bank balance where a high number is better? I decided to try and find out by clicking on the handy 'How it Works' button just below my grade. That took me here.

Of course, they're not about to reveal their algorithm to us, so I still don't know how I came to have that score. What I do know is that the number of followers plays a role, something which the people behind the tool defend. I can't imagine that my meagre 600-odd followers counts for much when there are people with tens of thousands (perhaps even millions?) of followers. But this is just one factor. Other factors are:

• power of followers - so the grade of my followers affects my grade. Not sure how they determine the grade of the followers in the first place, though - a bit chicken and egg, that.
• frequency of updates
• recency of updates
• follower/following ratio - so if many people follow me, but I only follow a few, this counts in my favour. I can hear @josepicardo expressing indignation from here!
• engagement - this refers to being retweeted, being @named and obviously, it matters what grade of twit retweets or @names you - to me, this may be the most valid measure.
  

It turns out the grade thing is like a bank balance, i.e. the higher the number, the better.

None of this helped me find out how @jobrich used the tool to find me. He seems to have found a lot of people that way. So I went back to the Twitter grade report page. On the top right hand side, are some links. One takes you to elite users in various locations. Perhaps @jobrich just searched for all the Twitter elite in the UK.

One very useful feature of the tool is that you can search for terms that are of interest to you. Once you have found out who tweets regularly about stuff that interests you, you can opt to follow them and widen your network.

LPOD - iPhone sim card

So I bought this iPhone, and brought it home, where I decided to try to install the sim card.

Erm, ri-ight.

I sat there, pressing buttons and doing all manner of finger contortions to try to get the phone open. No joy. I felt like a stone age woman faced with the internal combustion engine.

Totally stumped, I went to my peeps, via Twitter. Tell me again how Twitter isn't a learning tool...

Within moments, I had several responses. One of which was a link to this YouTube video. Tell me again how YouTube doesn't have relevant content...



Sim card installed within seconds. Only then did I understand that that was what the little picture on the inside front cover of the instruction manual wallet thingy was trying to tell me. Duh!

On reflection, it makes sense not to have to take the phone apart to get the sim card out.

On this conversation

Yesterday, I was going back over discussions on blog posts I have been tracking and something rather unsettling came to light. To put things into context, bear with me while I take a quick detour down Allegory Lane.

My stepdad isn't a very bright man. He's a lovely, salt of the earth, blue collar guy who cares about nature and the outdoors. However, when he is with my extended family, he comes over all insecure. The conversation flows fast and furious, full of wit and riposte... and he can't keep up. So he drinks a little too much and makes loud, off-topic statements, trying to claim a space in the conversation for himself - usually without success. One of my uncles is a deeply gentle, gracious man, who can almost always be relied upon to engage him one to one. One of my aunts is quite patronising and condescending towards him, but my stepdad doesn't have the subtlety of nature to have realised this (especially after a few beers)... and he adores her. My heart aches for him when I see him in this uncomfortable position - especially when he embarrasses himself.

Yesterday, I began to wonder if I am not like my stepdad in this read/write web conversation. For the first time in a long time (since CoComment stopped working for me, really), I was looking at a long list of the conversations to which I have contributed. I comment on many posts, but am seldom drawn into the conversation. Other comments will refer to one another, but my comments seem to off in a side eddy somewhere. I don't think I had had that vantage point from which to view this vista before.

I began to wonder whether in fact, I have anything of value to add in this space. Not in a self-pitying, bring-on-the-violins kind of way. More from the perspective of my dissertation. You see, I have been taking the view that the whole web 2.0 social media/networking thing had empowered the whole community, the whole connected world to access the conversation. And in theory, this is absolutely true. But in practice, the community has the power to vote with its feet, to ignore posts it finds uninteresting, to ignore the loud off-topic statements that come from the slightly insecure person in the corner who hasn't quite figured out that s/he is out of his/her league. So, in fact, it becomes a self-selecting conversation between those who 'get it'.

And this makes me worried about us also-rans. If 2.0 spaces do not, in fact, enable us to engage because what we have to say is not high-brow enough, does that not effectively reduce the pool of contributions? Are we not back with a form of elitism, albeit a more democratic one?

My mother-in-law has a little homily stuck on the side of her fridge:

The forest would be a quiet place if no birds sang but the best.

I know this sounds all Zen tree-falls-in-forest-ish, but if we're making our contributions and they are being ignored/overlooked/choose your word, are we really making any contribution at all? Do we really have access to the conversation? Are we really engaged in the exchange, adding our 2p worth to the sum of the network's knowledge?

Hmm. Is a puzzlement....

(T)wittering on...

Twitter is rapidly becoming a fairly mainstream tool. Recently, I attended a Jay Cross unconference, with a Twitter room as the back channel. Unfortunately, it seems Barack Obama had inconsiderately scheduled some kind of a 'town hall' or something for the same time, so it was a bit iffy for a while. It was interesting to see how the tweets in the room were restricted to those of attendees, but the main Twitter stream included our tweets in among everyone else's. Some people outside of the space were responding to our observations, I guess that's pretty un- as conferences go.

I have found my 'followers' have been increasingly rapidly lately, including my local radio station, my local newspaper, a range of people and publications that leave me guessing, including -rather worryingly - an organisation called Countersuicide.

Among these new followers is a young chap who calls himself Reformatme. I noticed that his tweets hinted at a South African heritage, so we started exchanging tweets regularly. I learned that he found me by running a Twitter search on 'Afrikaans', which I obviously mentioned at some point. He doesn't speak a word of the language but is hankering to learn about his heritage. Not least because he suspects that he is decscended from slaves, although his grandparents refused to discuss the subject at all.

He is at something of a nadir in his life, and I have been trying to encourage him. He has embarked on a course of study that he is not enjoying and feels doomed. This has been right in my ballpark, so it has been a pleasure to reassure him that no bridges have been burned and to make some suggestions and recommendations. In the course of our exchanges, I discovered that we live in the same town and that we know some of the same people. He is friendly with the daughter of my erstwhile squash partner. Small world.

Another interesting development is that the conversation about blog posts seems to have moved to Twitter, instead of in the comments on the blog itself. Not that my blog has ever attracted a hive of activity, but, via Twitter, I am getting reactions and responses from people of whose readership I was completely unaware.

Of course, I still hear that Harold has been out for a ski, Jeff is planning on going for a run, which is nice, too. But the number of useful links I am picking up, the breaking news I get, the opportunities to be a mentor and support... it's nothing like my initial impression or early experience of where Twitter was going to take me. I guess the user population is taking the tool where they want to go.

Which is at it should be, no?

On locations

Today I received an email from someone within my network asking who I knew that is based in the Boston area. I had a moment of panic as it dawned on me that I have very little idea where any of my network peeps are based. Then I realised I don't really need to know - you're all right here, aren't you?

Off the top of my head, I know which continent most of you are on, and some of you have made enough mention of your locale for me to get a closer fix than that.

For example, I (think I) know that

• Vicki Davis is in Camilla, Georgia
• Harold Jarche and Stephen Downes are in or near Moncton, New Brunswick
• Graham Wegner is in Adelaide, Australia
• George Siemens is in or near Manitoba
• Jay Cross lives in sunny California... Berkeley, I think
• Jeff Utecht is still in Thailand, although he is American... sawasdee, Jeff
• Ron Lubensky is in Melbourne - although he still has a Canadian accent after 20 years plus
  
• Janet Clarey is in New York state
• Frances Bell works at Salford University, which is in or near Manchester
• Claudia Ceraso is in Argentina
• Rina Tripathi is somewhere in India
  
• Eduardo Peirano is in Uruguay
• Don Taylor is in the London area
• A whole raft of you are in Brighton and Hove: Clive Shepherd, Donald Clark et al

And I'm finally starting to run out of steam. But that's just at random off the top of my head. Not bad for someone who has recently been assessed for Alzheimer's, eh?

It is with a sense of relief that I realise my atrocious geography is no longer a factor. I know exactly where to find you all! You're in my Bloglines, my Google Reader, my Twitter stream, my Facebook contacts.

You're all local.

Ain't it grand?

Andy Roberts and his dead skunk

Andy Roberts and his partner, Linda Hartley are two people with whom I am connected in several spaces. Distributed across some of these spaces, we had a conversation about a song. It was a song I knew when I was on the peripheries of a Bluegrass band years ago. I had never encountered anyone else who knew it, but I mentioned it to Andy and he not only knew the song, he could tell me a bit about its history. Perhaps I served to nudge him, because here he is, singing it at a folk club, accompanying himself on his Chinese lute (to be honest, it needs a banjo, but the lute makes a viable substitute).



The reason I post this here is because of the example of a distributed conversation. Somewhere between Twitter and Facebook, Andy, Linda and I have had a conversation which has had this outcome.

Cool, huh?

@Granumentally

Christian Payne is a young man who doesn't live very far from me, although we've never met. He Twitters under the name Documentally. According to this site, he's the most followed Twitterer in our county. I am one of his many followers.

Christian contributes a vast amount of material to the aggregation of personal perspectives that constitute the cloud, but one of the things I admire most about him is the enormous love he has for his grandmother, something which comes out loud and clear in his tweets.

During the Obama inauguration, he and his gran were watching together and he was twittering some of her remarks. Many of his followers expressed the view that she should have her own account. Trouble is, she doesn't use a computer herself. So she and Christian hit upon a plan. He would be her fingers during his frequent visits to her. And Granumentally was born.

In the process of acting as her amanuensis, Christian learned all sorts of amazing things about his gran, such as the fact that she was a partisan who smuggled messages under the seat her bicycle right under the noses of the German soldiers. Hear their touching story as part of this podcast from CBC radio (Canada)'s Nora Young.

Social media - the 'can't be arsed' brigade

Apologies if, in your neck of the words, the phrase is more than the mildly crass epithet it is here.

Steve Borsch of minnov8 has written an interesting article which looks at why execs who don't get social media, well... can't be arsed. Hat tip to Robert Scoble for the link via Twitter.

I'd be interested to know whether it's an accurate reflection, but of course, the people who could tell me aren't reading this!

A little trick I picked up today

Today on Twitter, I picked up a useful link from a contact I know only as Documentally (even though we have discovered we live pretty close to one another!). Since my husband has a congenital condition that causes his hands to tremble slightly, his photos tend to be blurry. Modern cameras have built-in technology to overcome that, so in recent years, this has been less of a problem but hand tremors can negate this technology on close-up shots. Documentally's link was to this video showing how you can make a stabiliser for under $1. I'm certainly going to give it a whirl!

Oh, and for those of you who still think that Twitter is not a learning tool... I present exhibit A.



$1 Image Stabilizer For Any Camera - Lose The Tripod - video powered by Metacafe

Singing the Technorati blues

I have been having an awful lot of trouble with Technorati lately and my emails to their support team have been met with a resounding silence. So now I turn to you to find out if anyone knows the solution to my little problem.

According to Technorati this morning, my blog was last pinged two days ago. Fine. However, according to Technorati, my latest post was this one, 17 days ago! All subsequent posts have slipped by unnoticed.

This has happened a few times over the past several months, and the only way I have been able to resolve it has been to get the Technorati team to look into it for me. This time even that doesn't seem to be an option.

And my rating is dropping like a stone into the bargain. I signed up for a Technorati account in order to be able to keep up with conversations in which I have been cited, so the rating issue isn't really important. However, since I had planned to use the information in my dissertation, I would prefer it to be accurate!

If anyone has any suggestions of alternatives to Technorati, in order to be able to keep up with conversations in which I am cited, I'm all ears. I'm fed to the back teeth with having to chase them for a manual update every so often. At the moment, I seem to be limited to the occasional narcissus-search, which means paging through umpteen mentions I already know about.