Live. Play. Create. Imagine New Ways to Make a Difference
I’ve had this picture of my Twitter social network in my head. Chris Brogan’s Twitter Packs made me think about it again.
Social networking loop de loops diagram 1.
Social networking loop de loops diagram 2.
I imagine that a more sophisticated, streamlined social networking experience will allow you to “mute” loops at will – aiding focus on a noisy day. It would also allow certain loops to sit behind a firewall for privacy, yet remain connected to the rest of the circuit.
I had an interesting experience this week. A colleague I have never met in person shared a very special event with me using Twitter.
A bit of background first: Douglas and I live in different countries, we work in very different roles, but have discovered more about each other over the last few months through blogging (including our intranet), Twitter, Instant Messaging and a brief meet up in Secondlife, where we have discussed issues around the application of web2.0 in the workplace.
Back to this experience. Saturday morning I walked past my laptop, when a message jumped out at me from Twitter…
wow, Douglas and his wife are about to have baby!
I felt so impatient, I wanted to know it was all going well, I felt part of his experience. Then…
I know it’s not the only Twitter birth, but I’m a little fascinated by the the future of lifelogging (aka lifestreaming) and augmentation of technology with our lives so I asked Douglas what it was like to live tweet his birth. This is his response:
“My wife and I brought a laptop to the birth of all four of our children. For the last two we each had a computer. They are convenient for watching movies in the event that things take longer than you’d expect and for updating family with pictures once it’s all done. After three under my belt I was certain there’d be time for Twitter as well as plenty of other surfing–we still had no name and I needed to research some naming ideas.
I only tweeted real time. No backdating. So there was no interruption. The twitterverse missed out on crowning, pushing, breathing, cutting the cord, APGARing, and loads of other medical denouement. Which is a shame since I think there are plenty of folks out there–men and women alike–that have a Hollywood view of what goes on in a birthing room.
Lifelogging was my primary intention. For the previous three we used paper or nothing at all. Those scraps may not be lost, but I certainly no longer know their whereabouts. I suspect to a great degree these tweets will recede in the same manner if not more quickly and irretrievably. I’ll be able to find them when and if I need.
Truthfully, I am an incongruous mixture of ‘kinda cool’ and ambivalent. I didn’t share any of the special parts; I shared the process and the steps. The twitterverse misses out on the brilliance of her eyes and the astounding mass of fluffy brown hair. Nor will it ever know how long it took before she shared the characteristic ‘grandad pout’. I’m not likely to ever break the mood of her nested on my chest asleep and snoring lightly to hack out 140 chars for everyone and no one at the same time.
Serendipitously, I just read an interesting discussion on Privacy Line with Lifestreaming by Duncan Riley at Techcrunch (hat tip to my friend and mentor Jack Mason.) Duncan writes about his concerns around privacy when lifestreaming, Robert Scoble ’s decision to live twittter the birth of his son and questions the boundaries of personal sharing using social media.
Robert Scoble’s reply to the post included this comment:
“We had dozens of friends who were following every tweet. Real-life friends, too. You know, the kinds that don’t blog and aren’t into technology. It saved us TONS of emails and phone calls cause everyone knew what was going on and didn’t need to call us to find out how things were going.
I’d HIGHLY recommend that other people use the public Internet to keep their families and friends involved in such life events like the birth of new kids….”
So here we find ourselves, communicating in new ways, able to share special moments of our lives and revealing more of ourselves to strangers than ever before. In Gavin Heaton’s recent response to my tagging for the “8 things about me meme” he likened blogging to a social striptease,
“here the writer reveals ever more pieces of personal and professional information until the readers have built a strong and even compelling sense of the author.
Now, my long term readers will know that I started out being quite reticent about my identity and its disclosure. But over time this changed … I began to openly write under my own name, include personal photos, audio and even video casts. Yet each time, I do so I feel like I am confessing something about myself … that in displaying, writing or “performing”, some element of my true nature is revealed. This is both frightening and liberating.”
As for my colleague Douglas, well I think his step in tweeting the arrival of his fourth child was bold, generous, special and a step for him in declarative living. Although, as he mentioned, he didn’t communicate every detail, mainly the process and steps.
And to think he wasn’t too keen on Twitter only a few months ago!
Note: I do not intend for this post to cause personal scrutiny upon Douglas or Robert’s decision to share the birth of their child using Twitter. That was their own personal decision, just as some choose to have water births and others have hospital births. I hope their experiences are examples of the layers of self we choose to reveal in social media and the ability for us to further connect with each other when we share experiences and events using technology.
In true collaborative spirit, I have put my name forward to contribute to Gavin Heaton and Drew McClellan’s new book .
Last year they created Age of Conversation. They found 100 authors to contribute around 400 words about the subject of the book. 100% percent of the proceeds went to charity.
So, what is the topic of their new book? You can vote on it!
To vote for a title, go to their SurveyMonkey survey: Click Here to take survey
There is also still time to put your name forward to contribute to the book. There are some basic rules for authorship:
I’m really looking forward to it! How about you?
It’s easy to mistake busyness for productivity in this wonderful webby world of social media. Let’s face it, when you follow multiple blogs using RSS feeds, communicate using Twitter, manage your in-box to keep it at inbox zero, contribute to other communities, social networks and wikis – you have an abundance of engaging information and conversations…..or a recipe for complete distraction.
So for those overwhelmed with information and social networks, here are a couple of pointers.
10 Simple Productivity Tips for Bloggers
There were some nice tips here for Bloggers (hat tip to Chris Brogan on Twitter), including using your feed reader as an in-box, and writing more than you publish. In a nutshell:
As you can see, it’s easy to implement a few time management basics like setting personal and professional priorities, making time to manage your time and information, preparing to embrace the unpredictable (life, work….and blogger’s block) investing our time wisely and sometimes, well, just doing nothing !
credit: August Boehm
Laura Fitton’s post on Twitter Village & Shel Israel’s twitterings and tongue in cheek post seeking votes for a Twitter Mayor made me (again) consider the unusual social dynamics of Twitter. In fact, it made me think perhaps we are all cultural exhange students in Twitterville.
Why?
Well, many of us arrive in this village as foreigners, we are all adapting to a networked culture, we are establishing our identities from scratch and as Laura describes, “tribe-finding”. Twitter can be a passport to explore different cultures, sub-cultures, thoughts and ideas.
Question is, do you choose to take a Contiki tour of Twitterville (thereby acquiring a heckuvalotta passport stamps) or do your stamps represent more substance, connections, memories, and valuable insights into other cultures? Maybe it depends how often you choose to dip into the conversations, your willingness to learn and embrace new ideas and your confidence to contribute to a dynamic community.
Other posts about Twitter:
Cybersquad Worldview
Sorting Profiles
Twitter Essence (my definition of Twitter)
Twitter Flitter (a web2.ode)
Further to my recent post on informal learning, I just had to share this quote from Ken Carroll of On Demand Training.
“The internet is changing the way we learn and that’s because of its network qualities. I believe we’ve moved beyond the Mechanical Age, and beyond the Information Age, to the Age of Networks, and therefore to the Age of Networked Learning. Networks are every where and, as Jay Cross persuasively argues, they are changing everything, including how we learn. The last time that happened we had the Enlightenment on our hands.”
Although I don’t think that linear learning is dead, I certainly agree the age of networked learning has arrived.
One of the things I really enjoy about Secondlife is the connection I have with my avatar. The process of creating my avatar, finding outfits, a skin, the right hair, accessories helped me learn to navigate and connect with Secondlife. The connection with my avatar is fundamental in giving me an immersive virtual world experience. I can express my mood differently with the click of an inventory change and my interaction with others is more captivating because of their expressed individuality.
Other virtual worlds have not given me the same connection. Even having the ability to select from a small smorgasbord of avatars in Active Worlds doesn’t seem to help, I want the ability to customise and be animated. In the same way, I find it difficult to relate to other avatars there, it doesn’t seem to be as “freestyle” as Secondlife.
Do you have an affinity with your avatar? Does your avatar selection help you connect with and be immersed in your virtual world environment?
I’m excited about the changes happening in the learning area. You may have read that Brandon Hall announced new categories late last year, for their excellence in learning awards including:
Methods of learning are obviously changing, and this makes my role in Learning Services and Knowledge & Collaboration even more interesting (and challenging for the year ahead.)
I’m expecting to see more companies implement structured programs and modify existing learning models this year to accommodate informal learning styles. Many existing learning programs fail to engage the audience or harness the expertise “in the room”. I think we will see more people using blended learning models to include blogs, wikis, social networks, virtual worlds etc in more deliberate, constructive, program driven initiatives, something I’m happy to say we are already beginning to see at IBM.
As more companies allow employees access to social media, more support for management and employee guidelines will ensue. Frontline managers will be taught more about online impression management, benefits of using social networks to capture tacit knowledge and build community – and ways to facilitate attention management, trust and authenticity.
The benefits are great, especially as more people begin to work from home and move to part-time hours. So many people talk about using social media to attract Gen Y (the Net Gen), but the maturing workforce will become even more dependent on social media to support lifestyle changes.
Learning, Knowledge and Collaboration – they are becoming even more entwined and I think learning of the future will be so much more engaging, innovative, social and learner-driven. Yes, I think it should be a good year ahead!
I was tagged a while ago by Luis Suarez and now by Stephen Collins for a blogger meme. There seems to be no escaping this meme – so here you go, eight random facts about me!
1. I have three young boys, the eldest starts school this year 
2. I had the great opportunity to create a paint-on-glass animation in ‘97 (glass is backlit and you paint each frame.)
3. I used to be a vegan. I eat almost everything now, but still love an occasional healthy felafel or miso soup in-between eating animals :0
4. When I was 11 I won a competition to see The Dark Crystal for inventing some strange creature. Early on I was taught about the power of imagination.
5. Like Stephen Collins, I was an occasional respite Foster Carer for disadvantaged children back in my twenties (on weekends). It was a great experience. If you are thinking of doing it, just do it.
6. I like double-salted liquorice. Yeah, I know, strange.
7. I didn’t get my car license until my late twenties, mainly because I always lived near the city. Still, I owe a lot of car rides, which I am making up for now with my children (and will be for the rest of my natural life.)
8. I went to Berlin in 1989 (part of an exchange program). West Berlin was an amazing, vibrant city. A great experience. We were told by the local educators who had family in the east, we would never see the Wall come down in our lifetime. One year later it came down. Lesson: never say never.
Which leaves me with the question – who would I like to know eight random things about?
How about… Penni Russon, Jen Okimoto, Kelly Drahzal ,Jon Swanson, Angela A Thomas, Ric Hayman, Gavin Heaton and Andy Piper.
You will not be plagued or grow warts if you do not reply! However, “the rules” are:
Link to your tagger and post these rules.
List EIGHT random facts about yourself.
Tag EIGHT people at the end of your post and list their names.
Let them know they’ve been tagged.
wonderchatter