Category Archives: Twitter

Social Media Tip for Readers

books, reading, Twitter

I think one of the coolest uses of social media comes from The New York Public Library. Each Friday from 10 – 11 AM, they use the NYPL_Recommends Twitter account to suggest titles for future reading based on your favorite titles.

I just finished the most recent title in Deana Raybourn’s Veronica Speedwell mystery series. If you haven’t read these mysteries, I can highly recommend the series. A bit of breathless Victorian kitsch with tongue firmly in cheek. I am caught up with the series, and I need some more feisty Victorian heroines so I asked the New York Public Library.

They recommended Caro Peacock and Tasha Alexander:

If you would prefer to connect with them more directly, their website features staff picks in a long list of genres.

Good Habits Are Hard to Start

blogging, social networking, Twitter

My exchange with Sheri Edwards of the What Else blog about our mutual love of crocheting and how we learned was featured as part of Edublog’s round up for week two of the #blogging28 challenge. While I basked in the glory, I also forgot to blog yesterday.

Have I already run out of things to write about? No…but I have moved further into the new year with its work demands and I haven’t quite gotten the habit in place yet. I have thought about potential topics but not made any notes so they die on the vine, as it were. I could expand on the twitter conversation I had with a few folks about our process:

I hope this didn’t sound flippant. I take my audience seriously but as I went on to share on Twitter:

 

The #blogging28 challenge allows time for posts to percolate by suggesting doing one blog post each week. And, by encouraging participants to comment on others’ blogs, connections are made that can lead from comments to full blown posts in the same way these Twitter posts led to this post.

I think I am behind on commenting on blog posts and want to explore some new writers. The Edublogs week two round up has a list of participants at the end of the update.

Walking the Walk

blogging, social networking, Twitter, writing
woman at podiumOn Tuesday, I stood in front of a lot of people and encouraged them to take action to tell their stories and to connect with the larger community. I asked them to tweet, blog, and advocate. I do all of these but not with any consistency so I decided that if I was going to lecture others about what they should be doing, I should do the same.
It is time to organize a consistent twitter and blogging practice. I am an active advocate but could be more connected with my own local legislators.
So…here is my first blog post in that direction…mostly a public commitment to connect more intentionally.
I have written about my commitment to 10,000 steps and one thing I have learned is that you must plan ahead in order to meet the challenge. With the excuse of the conference behind me, it is time to start scheduling these commitments.
And…I have now been doing the steps for 243 days…

An Abomination?

Media, thinking out loud, Twitter

A couple days ago, a well known figure in the digital world posted a tweet calling it an “abomination” that it took so long to open Google contacts.

I chose not to reply probably because of the celebrity of the poster, but the comment stuck with me. An abomination? I actually tried to open Google contacts. It seemed to go pretty quickly over my 7 mbps DSL connection, but I probably have low expectations. But, honestly, an abomination? Live in the first world much? And even in the first world, where the last 48 hours saw two seemingly senseless police shootings, it’s a ridiculous word to use to describe a slow website.

Maybe I’m also overly sensitive as I just finished reading Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson’s indictment of a flawed justice system where poverty and race have more to do with criminal investigations and trials than actual guilt or innocence.

We really need to get our priorities in order, my friends, when a slow website is considered an abomination. Annoying? Frustrating? Sure, but save a word like abomination for things that really are.

 

Curating Twitter

Project Management, Twitter

In her book Passionate Learners: How to Engage and Empower Your Students, Pernille Ripp provides some valuable advice for getting involved in Twitter. She recommends starting small and making quality connections with those you follow. That means having some criteria for what you are looking for in your Twitter feed.

I am putting together some resources for my ed tech project management class this semester and wanted to recommend some good Twitter accounts that could help them connect with and learn from the active online project management community. I started with a list from 2014. Tim Walker, who curated the original list, listed his criteria in making the selections. He was looking for relevant information, conversational quality, steady activity and plenty of followers (at least 2000). These criteria make a good starting point for curating a Twitter list and I’d recommend reading through Tim’s introduction to his list.

I’d add one more criteria that comes to mind after spending the past hour checking out the 14 folks on Tim’s list: I’m looking for evidence of a personal touch. One of the accounts posted a link to an automated daily digest and the few I looked at didn’t seem specifically related to project management. Another account was mostly retweets without providing any comments or conversation. Finally, at least a couple accounts seemed to mostly advertise upcoming workshops and meetups, and while these might be of interest to active project managers, I didn’t think they were right for my students. I skipped adding all of the above to my own list.

I don’t want to have to weed through a dump of your content to find useful resources. And, if you retweet a link, I would like to know that you reviewed the material rather than just working through your Twitter feed and retweeting stuff from others. A quick comment or observation can provide some context and help me decide if it’s a resource or article worth pursuing. Quality over quantity is the theme here, an important point for all of us to consider in our social media lives.

For what it’s worth, here are the five Twitter accounts I chose to share with my students. I’m going to add Holly Davis as she is fun and has an interesting way of including a pertinent quote in her links and Natalie Semczuk because she shared this fabulous collection of project management gifs. I can’t wait to share these with my students.