Reflections

The things that I have experienced and enjoyed the most on the Sot23things programme so far have been the actual process of setting up a blog and developing a voice for it, and Twitter. I enjoy the reflective activity that goes into creating a new post and I love the keeping up to date aspects of Twitter. The thing that I have found most difficult has been juggling the administering of the programme and taking part at the same time, alongside work.

Photo James Polley Photography

I am determined to participate in the second half of the programme in a more organised manner. Following other participants it would seem that the most successful are those who block out some time at the beginning of the week to take part in the week's 'thing' and blog about it straightaway. So roll on next week!.

A future thing

My experience of Linkedin to date has been a number of email requests asking me to add myself to someone's network. I have ignored all of these because I didn't know enough about how it worked and because I wasn't on it myself.

I have now talked to others who use Linkedin and explored the site, which I found easy to navigate around. I would say that it is very useful for networking, especially if you are freelance. However, it is not for me at the moment. I can see a professional use, particularly in relation to my interest in artists' books, but I need the time to set it up properly. So, something for the future.

Facing up to things

I set up a Facebook account years ago but rarely use it and really don't like it. I don't want to share every thought I have for all to see. If I do use it I always message rather than post on the wall. I never do games. I would like to remove myself but do acknowledge that for some friends who use it all the time it's a useful way of getting in touch, so never quite get round to it. And yet here I am writing a blog for all to see. Somehow the lack of adverts and simplicity of the blank page when composing feels a more comfortable place to record and share thoughts.

I have used this opportunity to reset my privacy settings, a long overdue task.I have had a proper look around the University of Southampton's Facebook page and was impressed with what I saw.I also took a look at Royal Holloway's and University of Sussex's Facebook pages. They were all almost identical in approach to ours: :news of events, polls, photos, library announcements. They all still look like it's a big effort but I think we need to keep a presence as it is more likely that students will link to and check Facebook than the website, especially when on the move.

My favourite thing

I approached Thing 10, Twitter, with trepidation. I live with a family of tweeters. The more they enthused the more I thought this is not for me. I resisted. I turned my back on it. However, I now had to confront it.

I started simply by going through the motions and following the instructions. And then something happened! The instructions were so clear, the results so quick, the composition of the tweet such fun that I was hooked. I started receiving surprised tweets from friends who thought they would never see me on Twitter!

And then when the tweets started pouring in from those people and institutions I had elected to follow I was even more enthused. It was like an instant current awareness service for all of my #favourite things. 

Tweeting in the snow

This photograph which I took of a robin tweeting in the snow reminds me of an artists' book I made entitled 'Small animals' as part of an exhibition Librarians' books.

I am not sure how much I will tweet but I do love checking in. However, this afternoon I saw a story on libraries in crisis that might interest my followers so I tweeted about it.

I like the challenge of writing to 140 characters. I have learnt how to add in URLs, photos and links and have even created my own #hashtags, but I am yet to re-tweet.

This is definitely something which I will now be using beyond 23things.

Browsing things

Browsing 1940s style

I'm using the reflection week of the programme to catch up on a few things that I haven't had the time to explore. And so this afternoon has found me trying out different browsers.

I have to admit that up until this point I have been very set in my ways and have got so used to Internet Explorer that I rarely try anything else. However, I have been pleasantly surprised. All the links to the introductory guides and videos for the different browsers were really helpful and I tried out the various tasks successfully.

One of the most useful things was, ironically, not to do with browsers as such but was the Windows 7 snap feature that allows you to have to windows open at the same time. I hadn't made use of this before but will be doing so from now on.

I used Google Chrome at home and  liked the feel of this browser and the tab feature and the bookmarks bar so much so that I may consider moving over to this at work.

A small thing

In my world of things calendars look like this!

This is a calendar which I inherited from my Gran. It always sat on her windowsill overlooking the garden and she religiously changed it everyday whilst watching the birds. When I went to stay I had the job of changing it which always felt an honour. This is a small but still very special thing.

And now for something completely different! Decided to kill two birds with one stone and use Doodle to set up a meeting with staff at Winchester School of Art Library whereas normally I would have automatically gone to Outlook. I found it very easy and fun to use and I like the ability to offer up lots of days and times which is not so easy on Outlook.I didn't like all the adverts popping up but that's just something you have to deal with and try to filter out. I still think that Outlook will be my default option for work but I would definitely use this when organising future social events with family and friends. That said a small spanner in the works of this idea is that my parents haven't got a computer. Back to the telephone!

I had already added Doodle to Netvibes as part of that activity but interestingly I forgot to go to my Netvibes page as a quick way to access it. Netvibes is still not a go-to thing...

I'd rather be making things than doing 23 Things

I am forcing myself to find the time to look at Netvibes when really I'd rather be joining the first year students in the foyer at WSA experimenting with every kind of printmaking...

However, I was determined to see what Netvibes could offer me.When I hit the first hurdle within seconds (it took three attempts before I correctly transcribed the letters in the 'are you human?' section of registering) I was quickly frustrated. Having no previous experience of personalised dashboards I approached Netvibes with caution. Within seconds my dashboard was populated with an overwhelming amount of information, most of which I wasn't interested in at all. Netvibes immediately became the enemy and I really disliked how busy the screen looked. I longed for simplicity and started striking off all the irrelevant information. Following this rather violent attack, I started to rebuild.

I took a different approach and decided to create a new dashboard for artists' books, a particular area of interest of mine both at work and personally. I found that if I searched for "artists' books" in inverted commas my results were reassuringly smaller and a hundred percent more relevant. Encouraged by this I started to add relevant widgets and links, including the Sot23things RSS feed, although frustratingly some of the widgets didn't work.

I think at this stage of Sot23things, I can be bold enough to say that this could be a useful tool, and that I intend to create several subject specific dashboards for different areas of interest and work. I intend to explore Netvibes over the coming weeks to see how useful it proves to be.

Collecting things and thoughts

I want to be more creative with some of the things I have collected than I have been in the past and in particular I want to explore how developing this blog could help in this process. I recently discovered some alphabet blocks from my childhood. As I wanted to learn how to insert a photo into my blog post, I used them to spell the word 'blog' and photographed them. Unfortunately, I then had to fall back on using my son's adept knowledge of editing software (a step too far at this stage!) to come up with the final image. I liked the idea that the blocks now spelt a word that they would never have been used for back in the 1960's. This activity has produced the first germ of an idea for an artists' book, but it's also shown me that engaging with social media could play a more positive part in my life than I was prepared to believe.

Things versus things

I have struggled to find the time to explore things 4, 5 and 6 during week 2. On reflection, this has been in part because I have been incredibly busy, but it is also to do with my reluctance to dive into the world of social media. I naturally err towards the side of real things. I am a collector. It takes great courage for me to throw anything away. I love things but do I love all 23 Things?! I now want to push this negativity aside and use this blog as a way of marrying my love of things with learning about the Sot23things.

Where will it take me?