The role of social media - Facilitating fluid interactions
Social media facilitates fluid interactions, it’s about giving more choice and convenience to interaction. Some people migrate towards online communication, others perhaps to physical meet-ups governed by tyrannies of venue, location, time, cost. But online has its own tyrannies of time and place. Social media is an interaction at best, but even if it’s just ‘monitoring’ it still takes time, it’s constant, and it’s reliant on the speed and type of internet access you have and the skills you have in using all the tools, keeping up to date with rapidly changing technology… And now a fair amount of people do both for different things perhaps or just shunt between very flexibly, social media and physical, but as per their choice and convenience.
The Use With Caution Bit - Online is loud (but silent)
The online chatter is loud, but a lot of it is repetitions, and created by the same small amount of people. That would be the same in a physical environment. But in a physical one you can see who’s there, how they’re reacting. Online we show the version of ourselves we want or are comfortable with and It’s impossible to know the eventual reach of a communication and who saw it. There’s a lot of volume, it can be very fast moving…
The Freedom Bit - I no longer have to be there’ (wherever ‘there’ is)
One of the prime advantages of online for me remains that it’s becoming more and more possible to attend things virtually instead of physically, or at least get a fair amount of information from events distilled to you. That might be Twitter in tweet ‘bites’ of information without much context, it might be a good blog if you’re lucky, or just maybe you can attend virtually the whole thing or it’s been recorded or streamed etc. Or perhaps there’s a webpage or tool that seeks to bring all the reporting sources together on it, link it to SlideShare presentations from, be a communal wiki for the event, etc (a lot of conferences seem to be facilitating this approach this summer using crowd sourcing through GoogleDocs for instance). There’s been a major increase in all these kinds of things in the last two years. It takes away the tyranny of place, of budget, of time to an extent, it makes the world of the event accessible afterwards.
You don’t have to choose one thing or the other - Half-way house interactions
Another interesting development is the recent burst of ‘half-way’ houses, the interface between the physical and the online and between official and unofficial. So for example at Umbrella (physical traditional conference i.e, published curated formal programme and speakers known in advance) there was a poster session on LibTeachMeets, a workshop on mash-up’s…. LibTeachMeets and Mash-up’s are, like LibCampUK, basically calls for participators to offer up very fast content sessions under a topic (narrow or very broad) at a free event, the ‘programme’ being an evolving thing that may come out of e.g. wiki, or of offers. Really eclectic, almost pop-up events, sustained by the enthusiasm for having one and attending, highly informal. Or at least that’s what I think they sound like from what I’ve read about, heard… Going to my first physical one in October in Brum for LibCampUK – because I’ve been curious about them for years, ‘unconferences’ as they get called. I suspect they’re all quite specific to themselves. But with the likes of libcampuk11 it was fascinating to note that a prime reason for people going was to ‘meet’ each other physically from the existing online community. The attendance list reads like ‘the online community’ / ‘existing long-term activists’ – there is crossover between the two, but they can often be quite distinct too. CPD23 is another example of this as has been noted, the new ‘online’ community it creates arranging physical meet-ups. Lots of them. Because folk in different localities just felt like it.
So many different ways to do CPD or form networks
There’s also the purely online events, things like #LibChatUK which takes place based on a topic with an agenda, is moderated, happens over Twitter, gets summarised, promoted online…. I followed the last one after the event and realised that a lot of rules don’t apply to this kind of thing. You could just join in half-way through in the way you wouldn’t enter a room physically for an event at that point for example. So, a plethora of options these days on how you do CPD, where and when and what suits you. These supplement and add options onto existing more traditional vehicles for.
Has CPD23 changed my social media interactions / CPD / community?
I think it is a bit re the interactions though it’s an evolving process. This blog is Mighty compared to any I’ve ever started before and got two posts into (2 of them). The schedule and having ‘Things’ really helps keep the focus and momentum. I am gradually becoming less cautious about it and adding more details to profiles, linking things up more. I think I’m tweeting less than ever (!) but then this is a time-consuming process, CPD23, and blogging, in its own way, and I have very little time. It’s not changed my CPD or use of social media for, been doing that a lot for a good while now. But I think as the programme goes on it is influencing it and changes will appear more. Has it enlarged my community? Not really. I read a lot of the CPD23 blog posts and hugely enjoy them, and find them interesting and their owners. But again I have so little time not really made contact with many, already have a fairly huge demanding network (though a different one to the CPD23 one). Will try and do better on that and make some comments, say hello, issue the odd invitation etc. Good to do to show appreciation to people for their content. Because I do enjoy, appreciate, find it interesting. Just don’t find the time to say so.
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