After yesterdays LIANZA 2012 Conference keynote I fielded some questions.
The final one from Amanda asked which skills staff in libraries need to gain to use social media effectively?
I know they aren’t skills (sort of) but the above was my answer (not just librarians).
“I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.”
Jack Kerouac, On The Road
18th October 2012 is my final day as social media manager with current employers CORE Education.
After 6/7 years serving the social media space the following metaphor has developed:
Imagine learning to play the piano. Putting in the years to hone your skills / knowledge which enables you to reach grade 6.
You’re then asked to share your insights with those who are at a lower grade, which you do willingly (it’s a wonderful feeling to assist and inspire others).
After a while of playing the same tunes, answering the same questions, giving the same answers, the urge returns to explore further levels and challenges.
This is not a criticism or a statement of arrogance, it’s a description which outlines where I am with social (media, or, just, the web).
The coming months will be the last devoted to delivering specific social media services and talks. Will always be happy to share my thoughts / experience / knowledge with others, it’s just that now my interest is in the next set of questions around:
There is a hunger to converse and surround myself with folks who want to challenge, explore, build, create waves. Whose purpose is to delight, astonish, create poignancy. Who are not afraid to try new things, create the space / time needed to cultivate the imagination, mash traditional and new models together, and most importantly, push at the edge of what’s possible.
If anyone has a role they think I could kick ass in which includes the above then please do get in touch. Maybe you’re tired of the whole ‘social’ scene as well—your comments / thoughts / ideas / responses are welcomed below.
Once a plane lands, a flight attendants walks from the front (or back, depending on which ever way the plane is disembarking) and releases access to the overhead lockers. Only when the attendent has passed the row and released the lock can people get up and collect their things to exit.
This will cut down on the bedlam and scrum of disembarking, allows for a steady and simple flow of exiting people plus a more controlled customer experience.
Would love to do this as an experiment—do you think it would work?
There’s this website where, at the beginning of each week, it displays works which are now in the public domain due to their copyright terms expiring.
You can subscribe by email or RSS, and even choose specific fields in which to be notified about (whether that be music, graphics, poetry, design etc.).
Then there’s this social layer in which, after creating an account, you can upload back into the community remixed works from ones which inspired them. This new content forms an interconnected ‘network of influence’ which is graphically illustrated for users to navigate around.
As a member, you also get access to tutorials, interviews and options to participate in group tasks and creative challenges set by the worlds leading artists and thinkers.
Sounds great, doesn’t it…?
Above are my results from a recent hearing assessment (an audiogram—please note the grey areas in the four graphs as they indicate the ‘normal’ range!
The ‘bad’ left ear (one which has a history of operations) is only functioning at 25% and at 40db (bottom left graph), the volume most people speak at.
The ‘good’ right ear is also under-performing (bottom right graph)—just 50% at speaking volume—therefore, I’m basically picking up maybe half of what people are saying at best…
The specialist discussing my results last year stated I’ve probably become very good at figuring out what people are saying rather than totally understanding their words (this is not a compliment).
There are two options:
All of the above left me gutted at the end of last year and after recently gaining a second opinion it’s time to face reality and make some decisions.
You have to understand that most of my childhood is littered with memories and issues relating to my ear problems. The constant poor hearing, ongoing visits to speech therapists from about age six (as my deficient hearing meant I couldn’t hear sounds properly to form them—how ironic that part of my living now is made by public speaking: irony or awesome…?). Then the teenage years, living with constant ear infections and three big surgeries which ate up months of my life with long hospital stays and even longer recovery times.
There are three parts to the decision of accepting and exploring hearing aids as part of my future:
Any thoughts, ideas, assistance, advice, help, links etc to assist in this will be humbly received.
I got a ‘friend request’ from gentlemen whom I met briefly at a conference. My approach to Facebook is to use it as a place to cultivate relationships:
*moving to the other side of the planet makes this platform a lot more important medium than normal.
I explained my reasoning to said guy of how I use this platform as a more personal network and also gave him links to this blog plus my Twitter as alternative ways of connecting.
Was interested to receive his take on how he thought “false psychology to disconnect the personal from the professional” and how it was a very old way of thinking.
For me, it’s not about privacy but more about intimacy.
Just as the media landscape continues to evolve so does our use of the many platforms available to us. People forget we can decide how we use them. We can define its uses.
How do you decide to use your social spaces? Do you? Is this thing on…?
I never met Hillman Curtis.
I wanted to.
The three times I visited New York emails were sent to attempt to connect, however, he was always busy with other things.
Busy with his amazingly adept creative offerings which I featured regularly on here (the last included a comment thread between myself and the great man which humbled me to the core).
This man was a mammoth creative influence on me. Raised expectations and understanding of the visual narrative; the simplistic but oh so sweet connection one can create through the video medium.
This guy was a master of his craft.
My last email to Mr Curtis was about a month ago after seeing the video above. I was selfishly asking him about his thought process as he embraced the need to lead a more creative life.
I now understand why there was never a response.
Thank you sir, for your creative offerings to the world.
Thank you for allowing us all to see your work.
Thank you for inspiring.
Thank you.
The opening lines on the about section of the Creatalyst app says:
“The creative process, a business project, even life, is a journey expanding our vision of what’s possible.”
Photographer, mentor and good friend Dennis Hodges, developed this app as a spark to the creative process we find ourselves in day to day.
The categories of Visualize, Compose, Explore, Develop, Deliver, unfold (literally) as you delve deeper into the audio/visual offering.
Used alone, it could simply excite the senses and neurons to reconnect thoughts:
And/or spark new ideas:
There are also deeper options such as favouriting images, deleting them from the image bank, sharing through social spaces, adding comments for yourself and others in the Creatalyst community to read.
I remember Dennis describing the seeds of the app idea on a train journey back from Lucerne to the Zurich, Switzerland (Feb 2011). As the magnificent view offered us lakes and majestic mountainside I was more intrigued by the essence of the idea shared.
Congratulations Dennis.
Not just on bringing an idea to market, but also on making it so engaging.
Most formal/traditional/current education systems provide lessons with the view the learners at some stage will complete some kind of test to prove understanding, skills, knowledge etc
Life on the other hand, provides tests and it’s up to us to make sense of the lesson (with the opportunity to pass that knowledge, skills, understanding etc on in some way).
Because I didn’t know better, the social media training I’ve developed and delivered in the past takes this test-first approach. Providing a problem to solve and a reflective space to discuss the lessons learnt (sometimes after failure), meant highly engaged participants with fantastic feedback plus obvious learning outcomes.
Would be fun to reverse the current educational paradigm of teach, learn, test.
Then again, that’s just my opinion—say otherwise in the comments below.
On the other, they reinforce a fundamental.
The wisdom comes in knowing the difference between the two (in the cacophony of social media discourse).