T5: Past As Prologue

Spot for reflection,Grand Hotel,
Mackinac Island, Mich.

I've found that written reflections, set down immediately after a project ends, are wonderful guides for future performance. You want the emotions associated with various challenges to be as fresh as possible, allowing you to put the proper emphasis on the problem and inject a sense of urgency into possible solutions. It is important to write them down, and soon, because as time goes by, those memories tend to fade into an overall sense of relief and fatigue: "Well, it got done, and thank God it's behind us. I'm sure whatever challenges we overcame we'll be able to overcome again -- if any of us are still here when they come up again."

Often my reflections settle down into a checklist I can file and unearth when a similar project comes along. The goal is to learn from your own mistakes, and who among us can keep all those problems and, more importantly, all those solutions in our head once the sediment of subsequent experiences settle over them?

So, how does this apply to "23 Things"? Here are a few reflections:

1. Realizing that this blog would be on a participants list displayed alphabetically, I would have been wiser to title the blog with a word that begins with the letter "A". That way, other participants probably would have stumbled across it. I find that when I have time to browse the various blogs, I unthinkingly start at the top and scroll down.

2. The value of an "environmental scan" cannot be overstated. It's no crime to poke around on other people's blogs to find creative approaches and then adapt them to create a more interesting site of one's own. It takes time but it stokes the creative fires. In fact, just by writing this, I'm thinking I need to look at more blogs still. And I will.

T4: Tweets, Feeds & Pushnote

I have been using Twitter and aggregating RSS feeds for some time now, so I concentrated on Pushnote. It took me some time to find anyone already using the service. No one on my Twitter or Facebook pages uses it. Then I went down the "contributors" list for CPD 23: no, no, no, no -- till, thankfully, I came to Helen Murphy, who was, indeed, already part of Pushnote and someone I could follow. Through her, I started following others. Perhaps, once it catches on, Pushnote will have greater utility. It appears at this point, however, to be the least useful site I have found via "23 Things." To be fair, and to give it the benefit of the doubt, I included this video that I found elsewhere.

Thing 3: Defining Yourself Online

Yellowstone National Park June 2010

After reading this week's exercise, I went ahead and posted a profile photo to Facebook. (A different one, the one I use on Blogger, apparently was too small for FB.) I also like the idea of a "visual" identity that carries over from one online or professional context to another. I chose this post's photo, from Yellowstone National Park, for its visual panache.

I'm not sure it's possible or desirable to have two identities online, one personal and one professional. If your posts are findable, they ought to be professional. On the other hand, I have heard of people who try to separate out particular media -- for instance, using Linked In for professional contacts and Facebook for personal ones -- and when getting invites explain to the invitee that they use Facebook, say, for personal contacts but they would be happy to have professional acquaintances join their Linked In circle of contacts. But, then, they lose out on a lot of Facebook information from those professional contacts, and isn't your social network at your job part of the fun of working in the first place?

A few years ago I tried keeping two Facebook accounts, one personal and one professional. Bad idea. Even I got confused, when accepting an invitation, who was going to which site. So now I have two sites: one I look at, and one I don't.

Thing 2: Signing Up, Looking Around

OK, so I had to catch up by one day. I signed up using the registration form, but there was no confirmation I was registered, and my name didn't show up on the either the participants list or the Delicious list. Instructions say to give it a day or two, and if it doesn't show, to check back.

Brooklyn Bridge

I did wander onto a fellow participant's list, from the UK, and left a comment. I came back to this side of the pond for the picture, left.

Thing 1: Starting On 23 Things

Gravestone, Paris, France

I stumbled upon the start of a new 23 Things for Professional Development course, on Day 1, and thought I'd like to hitch a ride. So here goes. I know Twitter, Facebook and a number of other social media, and am trying to teach myself Drupal 7, but till I really get that site off the ground, I figure I'd learn a few other new tools. And for the image at right?  I need all the prayers I can get.