Technology Twitter

If you're not present, you're absent...

..creativity's dark corners that networks need...

Today @mpesce talked on Twitter about the need for protocols for online networks.  It made me think about a convention and a process for being neither present or absent, but processing.

I have recently been through one of those 'life reinventions'.  Unlike the current 'sexy' portrayal of creativity the process was absorbing, consuming and sometimes dark and scary.  During the process  I switched off from my networks. One minute I was talking, the next I was disconnected. 

It was however a rich and a valuable time, productive and exciting, if challenging and complex.

                                                                                                Photo:  Mark Ramsay @ Flickr

Suddenly one morning...

[Deep in the heart of my insecurities]

"Panic, stress.... I haven't been talking to anyone, I'm a leech, when did I last contribute...

So much has changed, what a chasm...how am I ever going to explain where I've been and how I got here..

Does it even matter?"

photo: Fotolog @ Flickr

...and the question is...???

Networks add value by building on individual capacity, stretching peoples' thinking and then empowering  people to explore their own capacity. So, why, in a period of deep contemplation, did I decide not to share, when surely this would be exactly the time not only to ask for advice but to make the best use of it?"

The creative process is wonderful - at the end.  In the middle I found it complex and contradictory.  My online networks felt too public a place to expose such fragile thinking.  Do online spaces in their ephemeral nature provide pressure to present finished thought?  Is it really ok to be fragmented and indecisive?  How does an avatar portray developing thinking?

I have always thought that networks are non-linear.  Am I wrong though, are they very linear, our online social places being,  not places where thought can evolve, but a place to report the results of the thinking process?

There is no word, no hash tag, no convention for being present but processing.  If you are not 'present' then you are 'absent'. 

I have seen very few people I admire talk about the dark spaces of the creative process. 

My question: are our online networks missing an important facet?  Are they 'safe' enough for  emergent thoughts, or do we do our 'composting'  alone only presenting when we have visible evidence of growth...?           

Seems to me that would be a sad place falling well short of our expectations of ecosystems...

I don't know the answers, but I'm very interested in continuing to explore, what do you think?

I'm not sure - over to you.

(Photo:  seir+seir @ flickr)

The spaces in between - or communication in short.

Yesterday @lukegrange and I were using Twitter direct messages to organise for Tedx Melbourne. Our messages started short (140 characters) and grew rapidly shorter until they were one word long.

It got me thinking about communication, trust and the spaces in between. How a conversation underpinned by shared context and a pre- existing relationship could use Twitter to efficiently plan complex events.

Seems to me that when trying to replicate faceto face conversation in social software, we forget the power of the spaces in between - those spaces that exist naturally on face to face communication . So often on the web we try to fill the spaces with words when we'd be better off trusting ourselves to fill in those spaces. Isn't this how trust is formed?

When only 'My Mob' rules - bewitched twittered and beleagured

Hypocrisy, or something more complex?

• It seems that since Twitter has gone mainstream (for which my references include:

The Age newspaper
The BBC
Sydney Morning Herald
Channel 9
We've heard about famous twitterers from Demi Moore to Senator Conroy (fake and real, with the fake attracting far more attention) and Malcolm Turnbull, KRudd and Stephen Fry, to mention a few.  It seems that everyone is Twittering. 

So why the hostility and animosity from the web community.  The violins are out in full.

"It's all over"

"They've taken over our Twitter"

There's an avalanche of video and blog posts predicting the end of Twitter as we know it. Ridiculing those who are 'Twitter' addicted. Why the animosity.

Surely we wanted this - we wanted people to get it - we've spent columns of text, video, print trying to convince the world that this was the way of communication in the future. "Mob Rules", "Crowd Sourcing"

I'm taking my ball and going home!

Now that the crowd has come, we're not interested any more.  We don't want to play. 

It turns out that the crowd in Twitter is just like real life.. It's mundane and sophisticated, interesting and boring. We have what we wanted, a small microcosm of life. It is uncomfortable to be woken from the illusion that we are special.

it turns out that to change the world, we will have to put up with the marketers, the ignorant and those that do just want to talk about chocolate. 

The question now is what we do in this space, are we prepared to act, to do the hard stuff?

Can we do the hard stuff:  We need leadership not cynicism!

Twitterati, I think we need to have a good hard look at ourselves.  

• Do we want people involved?
• Are we surprised that those new to Twitter are clumsy with it.
• Were we sophisticated in our Twitter usage when we started?
• Are we sophisticated now?

Does it matter so long as we continue to have the opportunity to network globally?

Are we prepared to look at this next stage and work with it, to find out where it goes, or are we going to be too busy looking for the next phenomenon?

We started it - are we prepared to finish it?  It's leadership we need now not cynicism. We don't know where it's going, so how can we possibly know that this next bit is wrong?

Problogger love in - unconference of immense proportions?

Yesterday I participated in the Problogger Social Media Love-in as did, to date 600+ others.

It was an instant broadening of my network.  Like most others who participated, there has been a surge in followers, and some interesting new conversations. 

In essence it is the biggest unconference I've had the benefit of attending in a while.  The beauty is that by simply posting a set of presences or lifestreams, the 'love conference' (*joke*) has utilised existing content as subject matter. 

Participation has led me on an eclectic surf around a range of new ideas from Cyborgs to SEO and politician ratings!  I've had a wonderfully creative 24 hours, and have been inspired by sites which I would never normally look at.

Sometimes we get so very comfy in our spaces that we only look within our sphere of knowledge and influence.  I'm sure most people involved in social spaces/creativity or creative design would agree, that some of the best ideas come from triggers entirely unrelated to our usual worlds.  It works for IBM and for Google!

I think there's a case for a regular event which brings people out of their comfort zones, and utilises some of the wonderful information which we all produce in our lifestreams. Probloggers Love In did exactly that - and it's fun!

Twitter love....

..when Sue Waters requested assistance - Help me get my Twitter magic back  I had to think about me and Twitter. 

We've been having that 'autumn of twitter love' feeling. @dswaters prompted me to think more about our relationship....

Me and twitter
Our relationship is well...deep, or is that shallow.... 

We are above statistics, competition...marketing - that stuff.... it's all a bit - well, squirmy.  Me and Twitter, we're above that.., we're sponTANeous.

we partied.. me and Twitter, met people, have wonderful global conversations...  It's exciting, heady.

Me and Twitter - (we've been together for a year now) get our fun from chance conversations which spill over across other networks from chat to second life.  They are often rich and exciting. 

Twitter is dead complex. DEFINITELY a Gemini!  It's exhausting. Nowhere else is the diverse mix of the known and unknown, personal and inane...

Bit busy mind -  we found - me and Twitter that is. Then Twitter started to use me....I got a bit compulsive - bit like Alan Levine @cogdog - pressure to 'keep up'

Me and Twitter started to search for meaning, we found Charlie Schick useful in trying to understand our shallow yet enriching relationship...

Internet, wave 1 - mass broadcasting and publications
Internet, wave 2 - it's about the youniverse, many to many
Internet, wave 3 - it's about me and mine, few to few, in relevant and closely tied connections, making my First Life vibrant via my Second Life tools.

So where are me and Twitter today...  Well, I think we're happily blending Charlie's wave 2 and 3.  We just can't o past some of the 'many stuff'. 

To quote Charlie Schick again:

One other thing that I look for now in social apps is that it makes my
first life, my life in the real world, richer, and that the folks in
that network make my life richer.

So do the chance meetings make us richer.. to a degree, yes, but only by accepting that our relationship is ..senseless, purposeless, and by chance.  I have stopped expecting Twitter to 'improve' my life.  me and Twitter now pick and choose, and often ignore each other.  But when we spark - wow it's seductive. 

We are cutting edge - modern and traditional simultaneously.  We don't want to limit our relationship only to me and mine.  But nor do I want to obsess about Twitter's other relationships....  Twitter and me, we want to listen to the world, but we are also exclusive - we want to revel in our individual relationship..

Twitter wears  expensive sexy aftershave - and Target clothes.   

So send a little Twitter love - oh, and let's ditch the stats stuff.....

Social networking in education - some statistics

CREATING & CONNECTING//Research and Guidelines on Online Social — and Educational — Networking

NATIONAL

SCHOOL

BOARDS ASSOCIATION

Where to find it: http://www.nsba.org/site/docs/41400/41340.pdf

Nine- to 17-year-olds report spending almost as much time using social networking services and Web sites as they spend watching television. Among teens, that amounts to about 9 hours a week on social networking activities, compared to about 10 hours a week watching TV. Students are hardly passive couch potatoes online. Beyond basic communications, many students engage in highly creative activities on social networking sites — and a sizeable proportion of them are adventurous nonconformists who set the pace for their peers.

 96% of those with online access have engaged in ‘some form’ of social networking.

 

 

So, can we afford NOT to be involved. If we are going to be involved, how do we regulate and use social networking in a positive way, educationally?

 

Students and parents report fewer recent or current problems, such as cyberstalking, cyberbullying and unwelcome personal encounters, than school fears and policies seem to imply.

http://www.nsba.org/site/docs/41400/41340.pdf

 

What can social networking be used for? 

• Professional development and networking
• Use with students to develop working groups, innovation groups, study groups.
• Creating innovative communication pathways for workplace based students.
• Ways of identifying innovation in new ways.

What are students (US), doing with social networking?





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