Great slideshow demonstrating some of the implications between what I’d prefer to call online/offline, rather than real/virtual!

From Flowtown. Brought to my attention by Tony Watkins.

Last night I joined the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, specifically for the Social Media Seminar, which hosted a free (I believe monthly) event at around 8pm UK time (quite convenient), a really interesting discussion (again, particularly the ‘backchat’), which can be followed on Twitter at #smti. Once on the Ning site, I joined the Social Learning group, and got some more good links  for talking about in my Twitter session later today!

“We live in an age where opportunities for communication are increasing faster than ever. With the rise of Web 2.0 media such as social networking sites and blogs, it has become all the easier for philanthropic organizations to build new connections, as well as publicize their activities and needs.

And charities have responded, emerging as the surprising leader in the social media landscape. A UMass Dartmouth study released in June stated

“new research shows that charitable organizations are still outpacing the business world and academia in their use of social media. In the latest study (2008) a remarkable eighty-nine percent of charitable organizations are using some form of social media including blogs, podcasts, message boards, social networking, video blogging, and wikis.”

These figures are an increase from 2007, in which “seventy-five percent of the respondents…reported they use at least one form of social media.” However, one area where charities can improve is in leveraging these tools to raise funds. In 2008, the study notes, only forty-five percent called social media “very important” to their fundraising strategy, versus forty-six in 2007. “Somewhat important” answers received a small decrease as well, with thirty-six percent in 2008 versus thirty-eight in 2007.

These figures are an interesting anomaly in what is overall a strong push among charities to adapt to and take advantage of social media. As these new forms of communication take hold and break boundaries, it is important to explore what they can bring to fundraising.”

Read the full story.

I’ve had some interesting experiences at recent conferences (reverse chronological order, although I also wrote the most recent last)!

JISC E-Learning Fair
My iPhone was still awaiting repair/replacement, and as there was a £15 fee to use the wireless, I decided I’d stick with pen and paper, but when it then took quite some time to sort through the information and reproduce a blog, I’m thinking a Netbook may be the way forward other events. As I only have 7.5 hours a week to work on Blended Learning (although I invariably do more), got to conserve the time for working on new ideas, although clearly the dissemination of such information is important!

Why I Study History
PowerPoint was banned at this session, which was intended to be as responsive as possible, but I did write a few notes, and not too long after the event adapted those notes to integrate some of the discussion we’d had afterwards, and posted onto my WW2 Poster blog..

Men at War/Framing Film
Again, at these conferences I was armed only with a notebook. Neither conference was set up for Twitter, so it wasn’t a question there. In giving my paper, I had access to a presentation remote control, and this makes such a difference to presentation – allowing more flexibility, and more engagement with the audience. As to blogging however, I’d blogged BEFORE each conference, which generated a lot of interest (judging by my hit counter), bit I still haven’t got round to putting elements of my paper online, even though I could easily upload  the PowerPoints to Slideshare, and maybe even just cut and paste my notes (yes, I did use PPT, but I didn’t have a fixed script).

Greenbelt
Attended Greenbelt after the previous couple of events. I’d maintained contact with a number of people from those events via Twitter, Facebook, blog comments, etc., and it was a great chance to meet up with a number of people face-to-face again, and to have a clearer idea of which elements of the event to attend. Greenbelt experimented with an iPhone app for the first time, with around 300-400 users paying around £4 each (rather than £8 for a paper programme), in which you could favourite particular sessions. Only drawback with this was that the battery kept running out, and keeping it charged was either expensive (there was a place to recharge phones) or time-consuming in trying to find a plug socket not in use by someone else/combined with a session you’re interested in! So all my notes, again, were on paper, although I did send out a number of Twitpics from the event (don’t do this overseas, I tried a few from Twitterfon/Echofon, and it downloaded all my tweets as well – my bill for a couple of weeks abroad was about £200!)

Christianity in the Digital Space
At “Christianity in the Digital Space“, I came armed with… a notebook and my iPhone for the first session! Everyone else was hunkered down behind their laptops, and my phone, under the strain of so much Twittering, ran out of battery before the morning was up! After lunch, therefore, I returned with my laptop/partially charged iPhone, and joined the general melee for a power socket! We talked about the experience of constantly Tweeting (and other online interactions) whilst someone was giving a paper. Most presenters were quite happy with this, as they were the ones Tweeting when not presenting (even I didn’t manage both!), and the exceptionally brave ones kept an eye on the Twitterfall, and interacted with it.

Churches Media Council Conference
Once I overcame logging into the wireless network (there was no phone signal really to speak of), I had a great time Twittering about the event, along with a number of others, and having mini-tweet-ups, including meeting those I’d met before the event in person (always great – see, that’s why I talk BLENDED, not E-LEARNING). The event is quite rammed, and unlike many, I didn’t have a netbook, so tried to blog in the evening, but only managed a short entry on the first evening (trying to get agreement on a hashtag, and promoting the use of a Twitterfall – not quite this year, but it’ll be there next year), whilst it took a bit longer for the second entry, which was more of an overview of an event, and links across to others who had participated at the event.

Earlier this year I trained a life coach with Serenergise, run by Deborah Kerslake and her team (I’ve seriously been encouraging Debs on Twitter!), so I have had the privilege of meeting Camilla (one of the nicest people ever), and have watched with baited breath as this all came together, and am now fascinated to see how Camilla is using social media to build her brand/profile before her album launch: she seems to have had some good advice. The following video for ‘Rule the World’ (originally by Take That, and Camilla has been taken on by Gary Barlow’s record label) was posted onto YouTube on 24th September, and on 30th September was the most watched music video on YouTube (not surprising, I’ve listened to it multiple times, and today it has had nearly 57,000 views!)

• Camilla Kerslake: Website (beautifully fresh and simple, looking forward to the rest of the content appearing)
• Camilla Kerslake: Facebook (great use of the fan site, and simple leads into other areas of social media)
• Camilla Kerslake on Twitter (if you retweet “@camillakerslake I WANT to meet Camilla & Gary Barlow on Monday! Please RT x“, you may get to meet both on Monday evening – just got to get yourself to London. I love the fact that it is clearly Camilla sending the tweets – her personality is shining through)
• Camilla Kerslake on YouTube (SUCH a beautiful taste of what she’s singing, and a beautifully personally channel!)

I watched carefully to spot Debs at 3.37

The video below is taken from Terry Wogan’s Radio 2 show: this I think is from the 19th September, although he’d already played the song once, and had so many requests for it, it was added to the playlist again.

In reading other’s Twitter updates, I came across an interesting tool: “Portwiture“, which reads your recent tweets (I’m not sure how recent, but I tried this out yesterday and today, and the images had changed significantly, so I’m assuming it works on the most recent tweets only) and turns them into a pictorial montage. At first, appearing like a bit of fun, I was extremely pleased to see that sfdo‘s tweet stream very much reflects the core message of the company – adrenalin sports!

I then took a montage at around 10.15am today of each of the tweet streams that I manage to see how far they reflected each of those messages:

and I’m thinking that’s quite a good reflection of @drbexl also!

Well, @digitalfprint‘s stream is definitely reflecting my interests in Twitter and social media in general!

I’m not entirely sure what that reflects, but there’s definitely some history in @ww2poster‘s tweetstream!

Well, @skillsnetwinch hasn’t really been fully developed yet, so that’s a bit vague!

Again, @nwccgathering is still very new!

Social Networking Sites
So, all social networking sites have different functions? I use Twitter as a push/pull news source and for relationship building with people who are interested in the same things as me, whereas I use Facebook for people I already know to continue to build those relationships, and of course there are many more options. On Linked In, you are only able to connect with people that you truly know, and both parties have to accede to the invitation. Linked In recommend that you only link with those that you really know, as all your connections are able to post recommendations ,  which won’t be helpful from those you don’t know… the idea is to build a trusted network, and if you’re interested in what is in someone’s public profile, you can get introduced through another friend!

Linked In: Business Only?
As we noted in an earlier post, Linked In is designed for maximising business opportunities. Interestingly, when I checked out Google images to see if anyone had poked fun at the “stiff” reputation that Linked In has, I was faced with a sea of serious blue and white images and earnest endorsements for Linked In, so it clearly doesn’t attract that kind of attention, but there are more functions to this site than at first glance

DrBexL: Profile
I’ve had my Linked In profile up for a while, but not done a huge amount with it, but over the past few weeks I’ve had an increasing number of requests for connections. So, what does my profile now include:

• Current job has now become current jobs. It’s great to be able to see them concurrantly, demonstrating the range of projects that I maintain an active interest in. I used “Import Resume” to import from a Word document. I had problems initially, but this could potentially have been that 2 windows were open, and it did eventually work. Fairly impressive, although as with all these automated tools, not 100% accurate.
• An image.  I’m still debating whether to change this to the “Keep Calm and Carry On” image I’ve been using most other places, but I also have a PhD portrait doing the rounds, and I like to ring the changes – although the conventional wisdom is “Keep it the same across the platforms”.
• WordPress application: This draws the latest posts from my http://ww2poster.wordpress.com/ feed. I would like to be able to add a feed from this site also, but it only allows one site, so I have also implemented BlogLink by Typepad, which not only draws the feed from here (for some reason in duplicate, there don’t appear to be any edit options), but also shows me the latest postings from my contacts.
• Added a few entries to the “Reading List” (which feeds back into Amazon, but unfortunately without any monies to you), which gives an indication of how seriously you take the projects you profess to be interested in. I read a lot, but would use this space only for “professional” books, which might make it manageable, but for today, I don’t have time to add them all right now!
• Slideshare (for which I already have an external account), which gives me access to uploaded PowerPoint (and other presentation) slides uploaded by my connections and those in my industry. Presentations can be download, shared through other social media, and recommended. Recommendations not only help others work through the “dross”, but demonstrate that you use credible resources, and therefore your recommendations may have some value.
• Joined a number of relevant groups. There’s hundred to choose from, so care needed here. Again, look at those that your connections are using to assess their relevance, and then sift through the “noise” for helpful information. I receive a summary email every day, so can quickly read the headlines.
• Recommendations for a handful of connections (it’s great for working on being concise), with more in planning. I have also contacted others (again, more in planning) to request recommendations on my own work.
• I haven’t used Box.Net yet, for the uploading of files to the profile.

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