Facebook Status Cloud November 17, 2009

I’ve been on Facebook since December 2006, when Erika Harno introduced me to it. I didn’t really know what to do with it until I went skiing with Oak Hall in April, and within a week I had 70 “friends” (I’ve always been fascinated by the words these companies use – are all your friends REALLY friends? And isn’t followers for Twitter a bit creepy, as for Fans on Facebook pages – I’m sure there must be another word for that now pages are hosted by non-celebrities e.g. I have one for Digital Fingerprint and created one for Super Fun Days Out, which we’re still developing).

Now the joke is that I’m never off it, so I was curious when I saw the offer to create a tag cloud of all my status updates ever (there are other options)… I wonder how recognisable I am to my Facebook friends!

Interesting…

Looks like I am always wondering what’s happening tomorrow, and tired at night… and I’m always trying to do something! I’ve clearly talked about various interviews – upcoming, outcomes, etc. and clearly quite often update my status as I’m dilly-dallying about getting dressed! Bizarre mix, but not that surprising!

I’ve clearly used more words than this, so be interesting to see the algorithm that is used (not that I’d make much sense of it if it’s pure maths…). The cloud to the left is taken from a lifetime of tweets, whilst the one below is from the last month.

ALT-C 2009: In Dreams Begin Responsibility September 8, 2009

Watching ALT-C 2009, streaming live from the University of Manchester, from today through Thursday 10th August 2009. There’s also some other sessions being streamed via UStream.

Follow the stream on Twitter. (#altc2009 seems to be the main hashtag, but there are other’s noted!).

Beware of the concept of Digital Natives:

I’m Back, I’m Back, I’m Back August 13, 2009

I’m back from France (via Spain… long story), but I’m not unpacked, cleared up, or opened post yet, but I have faffed around on the internet for a considerable time… partly after 3 weeks without it, there’s a lot built up – and I still haven’t finished it all!

However, see: Digital Fingerprint on Facebook.

San Sharma @ Scanner Central July 9, 2009

Last night I went to my first Scanner Central event. I’ve been meaning to go for quite some time… although as I said to John Williams when he asked me how I’d heard of them, I can’t remember any more, but it was something to do with reading Barbara Sher ‘s book and then finding that John had been on one of her holidays abroad, and had since set up something in London! It’s a bit of a trek from Winchester (about 1.5 hours each way), so I may not be able to go every month, but it’s great to meet other people who change interests so often, and John wants to encourage people to work together to get some of those ideas into production, rather than giving up as soon as you’re bored with it! I guess I’m more of a longer-term scanner, as I DO have lots of short-term interests, but also have some long term ones, centred around learning, academia, learning, contemporary contemporary Christianity, and wartime posters!

San Sharma gave a really interesting talk (apparently only his second time of public speaking: wouldn’t have known if he hadn’t said!), most of which was familiar to me, but it’s always great to see that I’m on the same wavelength as others, and there’s always a couple of things you come across that you go “ah ha” to! Most of the tools are listed from San’s presentation (see below), but gave some interesting context for social media also!

• Any business not in social media is not likely to survive for long in the modern world.
• Social media allows you to express different parts of yourself, as you talk you find a theme/style that you like and others who like it. So you connect with others with whom you have things in common.
• Social media – offers accessible publishing tools for everybody, for many to many dialogues.
• It has changed the fundamental nature of news media, from institutions to the media, the masses decide what’s hot (see how quickly the news about Michael Jackson’s death got out)
• It’s now about how good you are, not who you know, or who you work for.
• Twitter is rather like a city, where you overhear random conversations. A lot of the conversation is random, but this is similar to real-life where chit-chat hold human groups together. No one cares what you had for breakfast except you, but you’ll tell others anyway (we’re talking offline, as much as online!)
• Social media is just another tool, you can write a novel with a biro, typewriter, computer, blog… all different tools, although changes the writing/reading experience somewhat.
• Social media offers an opportunity to build meaningful relationships, and follow industry news (whether you’re pulling it down or pushing it up)
• Twitter: Should it change it’s question from “What are you doing?” to change the kind of responses that it gets?!
• Mass media offers a mass experience for events, for example, for the final of the Apprentice, felt a bit like was watching it with the rest of the nation in the front room, following Twitter feeds!

More Information:

• See San Sharma’s presentation here (6MB, PDF) (picture)
• I have been using Vistaprint, but love the Minicards that Moo uses (San does some work for Moo, and a number of Scanners had the cards)
• Handy tools: Knowem; DandyID

Other Presentations

• Philip Watson (picture)
• Chocolate Ecstasy Tours (picture)
• My1minuterant.com (picture)

Scanner? For Sure! July 2, 2009

I love this from Barbara Sher: “you wouldn’t ask a bird to pull a plough. It’s not cos it’s an inferior bird, a naughty bird or a lazy bird. It’s just cos it does other stuff and there are animals who do that… it’s their thing, they know how to pull a plough. And there are people who do the things you don’t like to do, and they like to do them, and they’ll do them better than you’ll ever do them on your best day because they get a kick out of it!”

Barbara Sher

First came across Barbara Sher in 2007, when I was trying to decide what I SHOULD do “for the rest of my life”, not sure that’s for me, and coming to terms with the fact that I can do many things, and that my passion for doing them means that I’ll do them well, but there reaches a point where I’m done! I have noted, however, that my interests circulate around learning/research, teaching/academia (post-compulsory), communication, community creation (online, including new media or offline) and contemporary Christianity!

Scanners Night, 8th July

Looking forward to going to a Scanner’s Night in London next Wednesday (organised by John Williams), with San Sharma, a Social Media Consultant.

#assk64: Trending May 27, 2009

#assk64

Finally, I am “trendy”, and was ahead of fashion!

The website “64 words for Aung San Sui Kyi” launched yesterday evening at 9.30pm (GMT), and I was only the second person to Tweet using the hashtag #assk64. Working late on something, I watched it start to take off, particularly once @SarahBrown10, @jimmycarr and @eddieizzard started tweeting about it.

Trending Topic
The image to the left is a screenshot from Twitter in the last 10 minutes, showing that #assk64 is now the third most popular topic on Twitter right now – that’s pretty impressive in less than 24 hours! Most are redirecting people to the website although of course there’s always a few mis-using it – ignore them!

So Where are most of the Retweets coming from?

The organisation behind this hasn’t been slow in asking celebrities to post their “64 words” (although many, like me, have tweeted about it, rather than written their 64 words), and I suspect that @stephenfry (with over half-million followers) has had quite a bit to do with an extra spurt in popularity and the official @64forsuu should be worth following too! @assk64 has dropped off the top trending topics, but still plenty of activity, particularly triggered by Alan Davies this afternoon.

On the Website: George Clooney, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Vaclav Havel, David Beckham, Daniel Craig, and the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown have all written messages of support.

The News: Waiting to see it start to appear, only 1 story in Google at the moment.

Take Action: On the website, on Twitter, or on Facebook!

Update 11th July 2009: Interestingly #assk64 is still circulating on Twitter.

National Digital Inclusion Conference April 27, 2009

Been watching the live stream from the Digital Inclusion conference in London, picked up that it was on from the Twitter feed. Interesting to listen to BBC and government ministers talking about policies and developments…. they’re breaking for workshops, but may catch up with more later. Read more.

How to Demonstrate the Value of Social Media to Your Boss – Free Webinar with Chris Brogan April 24, 2009

Free Webinar 

Delayed webinars – such a great tool, and this one was particularly helpful in my interview preparation!