Pages

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

(mis)Adventures with Twitter

As part of my subject this semester I promised myself that I would really push myself to use social media tools that I am not overly familiar with. Part of my challenge is to start using twitter, so I decided that I would tweet from the conference (ImaginePLNSW) that I am attending this week. I have been practicing over the last few days, and have found it to be a frustrating experience. I installed the twitter app on my iPad, but found that when I search for tweets with the subject hash tag #INF2506 I only get a few, not allow them. I couldn't find a fix for this, so decided to try hootsuite and tweetdeck as alternatives. Both seem fairly easy at first glance, but I am finding that if I retweet from hootsuite, I cannot get it to show in the #INF2506 stream. I feel like the last few days have been going around in circles, but have plans to catch up with a few more experienced people here at the conference to pick their brains!

I have spent some time thinking about what makes for a good tweet, especially from something like a conference, and will be try to aim to link to presentations and info presented when I can, to make the tweets more valuable.

Shoal Bay (the. Conf location) is lovely, and apparently, there are lots of dolphins in the harbor -I will keep my eyes peeled!

Thursday, July 12, 2012

TED talks

I have spent the last week working my way through the 20 TED talks that were recommended for this subject. I have found them to be very interesting, and a great starting point for this subject. I had only discovered the TED talks site a couple of weeks ago, when I downloaded the ITunes U app -what a great thing that is - I have found a number of great talks I want to listen to when I get time! I also watched another talk by Clay Shirky on cognitive surplus that was very useful http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/clay_shirky_how_cognitive_surplus_will_change_the_world.html

I really liked the idea that people have so much time and generosity of spirit that truly amazing things can be created when they choose

Starting out with INF506


My first post  for INF 506 will look at several points:

*my understanding of social media
*what technologies I already use
*what I hope to learn in this subject

To me, social networking is the use of a wide range of communication technologies to build relationships, commections and shared virtual spaces with others. Social networking can provide people with the opportunity to feel a sense of belonging, to share information and understanding, and to express themselves.

I am not a huge personal user of the technologies, but am a member of a forum on a topic of interest to me, and have maintained this blog via blogger, although that has been somewhat neglected for a while. I have not previously had a Facebook account, but do maintain the account for my library, and am about to set up a work twitter account as well. I have had a twitter account for a while, but really have not used it much -I did participate in one live chat session on twitter for the summer reads campaign, but admit I found it hard to follow all the simultaneous conversations!!!!

I think that I will get a lot out of this subject, as I am keen to become more comfortable with the various technologies for a few reasons
* I need to be able to keep up with what is happening in libraries
* customers expect library staff to understand anfd troubleshoot social media sites
* I want to find ways to reach out to my customers and build a greater sense of community around my library, and social media is a great tool for that.

I do have some trepidation about the need to immerse myself in so many things and am not entirely comfortable with the amount of personal sharing that seems to be a part of so many of these services - I guess time will tell, and that I must continue to make my own choices about what I am comfortable with.