Having sorted out my office, and fixed one of my broken NAS, I decided to to look at my website.
Moved it to a new theme, and started enabling it for IndieWeb yesterday.

Wow. Bit of a hill for an old retired guy!
Still, got some mentions working, started working on some syndications stuff, checked I have h-card enabled, and got IndieAuth working.
That got me onto the IndieWeb wiki, ooh, they use Slack, better get on that…

IndieAuth got me to github; yes, kept meaning to learn about that… which got me to GitHub Pages, to Jekyll via Ruby
Diverting via static pages to Hugo

Unfortunately, less than a day later I’m contemplating the old adage one bite at a time

So, any first pointers?
All suggestions gratefully received – I expect the occasional “Ooh, I wouldn’t start from there”!

Oil Rigs
Oil Rigs at Rest

New Year, New opportunities

I’m not a great believer in New Year resolutions, often finding them a trite way of setting weak aspirations; however, the happenstance of calendar dates does give an opportunity to both look back, and look forward. So these are “sort of not-resolutions

My last year or two  have been challenging in family and health terms, and some sorting out at work has been testing.

I’m fortunate both with my family and my employer – and I have much to be grateful for, so I thought I’d set out some things I’d like to do.

Blogging: I have sadly neglected my blog, for Twitter, Facebook and occasional Tumblr forays. I am going to share more content here – although I may play a little with both Medium and ghost. Some of it will be technology related; some security; some knowledge management, and some more personal… I’ll try to keep my Scottish Independence thoughts elsewhere.

Coastguard: I’m part of a Search and Rescue Team locally – I intend to work more at this and step up to a more senior team role.

Family & Friends: I intend to make more effort to leave my lovely Scottish eyrie and actually see more of people this year

Personal Development:

  • I have achieved a couple of security qualifications last year, CISSP and SCF; I intend to further my security knowledge and my general architecture knowledge
  • I intend to improve my physical fitness
  • I intend to do more to keep abreast of technology – particularly Internet of Things type activity and cloud based work
  • I will do more outdoor activity, including regular sleeping outdoors – particularly in my hammock that I have used for 8 years on and off.

Work: I have said I’m lucky in my employer; I want to make sure I work with some wider teams in the company and build my contributions across our security and architecture team.

What about you?

Have you any aspirations/goals you’d like to share?

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It’s widely acknowledged that there’s an air of sniffyness amongst some people who claim not to understand Social Media, Facebook friending and so on, and have never had accounts.

There’s another group of people who leave Facebook because of privacy concerns, because they felt they had to maintain a persona, or because they feel it’s indulgent or whatever.

Back in July, I alluded to the Tantek Çelik‘s SXSW Rise of the Indie web session, where he suggested own your own content and federate/syndicate it through the FB/Twitter silos.

I’ve used  ThinkUp to track my Social Engagement, and capture posts and tweets, so I’m fairly sanguine as to what I share, and to whom.

The concerns are spreading way outside “the social media bubble” and I thought it was interesting to see the contrasting of online/”real” friends in a UK TV advert for tea.

Who do you friend, and what do you share?

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Blue Glass on Sand

Someone was giving me their war stories about their personal email, and I wondered about mine. I have email coming in from 5 or 6 domains and a couple of gmail accounts. I handle it all through Google Apps For Your Domain, which does a very creditable job of icing SPAM for me. I did a quick check and in the last 30 day I received 1295 emails, no spam. Call it 40 a day.

The vast majority were notifications from Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, or communications from suppliers I have a relationship with [usually tagged and filtered]. I got 16 from contacts in the Coastguard; 20 from a fraternal organisation; 25 as email output from a Yahoo Knowledge Management Group. The last three could all be handled via blogs/wiki/groups.

Personally addressed email to *me*? Only for me? I got… none.

My personal contacts come to me via Facebook; via Twitter; via Skype messaging, or by SMS. I guess in those terms I really am “Thinking Outside the Inbox” as Luis Suarez would say.

I only wish my work email was as simple 🙂 – about 20 a day, about half of which requires me to do something… and about 80% of that could be dealt with better. Will SharePoint 2010 help address that? I do hope so.

How much of your email is really personal to you?

Image Credit: Owen’s

sharing fruit

In a typically erudite post from David Cushman, he asks “What makes you share?”

While he discusses the virtues – or otherwise – of taking deliberately contrary positions, I think the highlight of the post for me is the following:

…the only way we can find others who care about the same things we do is through one or other party expressing that concern. Until you share your thoughts they have no value to you or your network. They contribute nothing to making your life better or the world a better place.
But the simple act of sharing what you care about can make change. When you share you allow others to access your thoughts and to discover you…

I mostly share to learn. The old saw is “the best way to learn something is to teach it”. I also think it’s better to make your views, interests and experience open to your peers – as it adds value to your interactions. I’m a remote homeworker, and reading my social media/shared stuff will give people a better idea of what I’m like – for good or ill…

To explicitly answer David’s questions

So what drives you to share?

The fascination of discovering what other brighter people have learned or thought – and how easy it is to learn these things.

What would make you share more?

The improving of the technology; for me it went something like delicious, blogs, my ongoing love – Twitter, and latterly posterous, bit.ly and Facebook with Selective Tweets.

So, what makes you share?

Image Credit: wlodi

masked man

Who is this masked man?

According to a work colleague, it probably should be me.

Why should you hide your identity?

To be honest, I’m not really sure. One of my colleagues said they’d like to separate their updates depending on the audience, their facebook feed being different to linkedin for example.

I was fine with that – after all, I use hashtags in Twitter to decide whether I send an update to Facebook(#fb), LinkedIn (#in) or Yammer (#yam) or none of them. Where I was puzzled was when another senior colleague said he thought most folk would probably choose to maintain different identities and say different things to different audiences.

I said

I talk differently to my wife, and about different things; my persona is authentic, which is important so that people can build trust…I’m friends/contacts with differing groups of folk [on] Twitter, FB, LinkedIn. All bleed into each other, so I need to be “real”.

What do you share?

I’m a moderately open sharer, and you can find links to my Twitter, Posterous and Friendfeed on the blog. I’m also on LinkedIn, Flickr, and you can see loads more on flavors.me. You’ll see different things on each of them, but you’ll find the same tone. I’m me, wherever I am.

I don’t share all my KM stuff on Facebook; it would bore my Coastguard friends rigid. I don’t tell people on Yammer about a recent shout where we went to a casualty on a beach; it might not interest them. I don’t usually “friend” work colleagues on Facebook, because they are different audiences; but some I do, and I’d look pretty odd if my tone wasn’t authentic.

How many identities do *you* have?

Sorry guys, I just have this one. What about you?

Image Credit: P!XELTREE

How did a Twitter chat work?

I had a brief meeting today, about Knowledge Management.

I didn’t know where the meeting started; I didn’t know everyone who was there. I didn’t know when the meeting started – and I wasn’t invited.

How did that work then? Basically, I spotted a tweet from someone I follow that was hashtagged with #KMers. Following the link got me to the live search for the hashtag, and I was able to take part in the lively discussion – the bit that particularly interested me was the creative tension between folksonomy and taxonomy.

What’s it all about?

Chasing it up after the event, I found the excellent KMers.org site, where a group of Knowledge Management professionals

aim to use a Social Media tool (Twitter Chat) and a CMS tool (Drupal) to run a site that helps KMers share information about the practice of Knowledge Management

I just lucked into it. I enjoyed the section I was involved in, and I’d recommend future events.

You can see the transcript of the [Pilot Chat] Best Ideas from KM World.

If you are interested in Knowledge Management you should take a look. Maybe I’ll see you there?

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Scoble, Longhorn Evangelist
Image via Wikipedia

I’m still trying to find my way through what social media/”Web2.0” actually means to me.

I have accounts on lots of services, and use:
Twitter – a lot
Facebook – a bit
LinkedIn – a bit
I blog – a little

I glance at other services, share some photos on Flickr and follow a few folk on friendfeed. Prolific posters on any of the services, I tend to consume via RSS.

One of these is Robert Scoble, who is hugely well known – in certain circles – and has made a recent career about knowing things in this space.

I was staggered to see in his recent post Twitter’s platform shortcoming

… last week I learned that there are tons of followers who just follow you to get you to follow back

I thought everyone knew that. But then, there’s loads of stuff I don’t even know that I don’t know.

Why do *I* follow people?
I know you, you’re geographically close to me, I liked your blog post, someone I follow has @ replied with something of interest.

If you follow me, and you’re not immediately interesting, or your tweets are pushing links all the time… sorry, I won’t follow you.

I can’t remember ever knowing something before @scobleizer. I did this time.

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I’ve just remotely attended a really interesting presentation in London [OK, I attended remotely], by Media Snackers who talked about engaging with the young, through social media and so on.

Couple of things:

The world’s changed, and it’s not turning back

used to be their strapline – but they’re now emphasising

cheaper, quicker, sexier

as what the social media stuff can do. Look at their site to see what they are about.
A couple of the points they raised struck me – the takeup of social media amongst the young is astonishing; they highlighted a Forrester report which segment the social media area into

  • Creators
  • Critics
  • Collectors
  • Joiners
  • Spectators
  • Inactives

and this is segmented by age – with the creatives and critics highly represented in 16-24, with spectators and inactives being preponderantly 50+ (like me!)

perhaps nothing too new for some of us – although there are scary figures about the change in media consumption, but something he said struck a chord. More or less:

… a lot of people seem to be getting into the space; I mean, look at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office – they’re a lot of suits, but they’re on Flickr, on YouTube, on Twitter, they blog… where are you? I mean, c’mon guys…

I thought, that can’t be right, can it?
Hmm…
So, I had a brief look, and found a Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and blog platform presence for the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. It may not be exciting, but it looks like they do have a coherent social media strategy.

What are you doing?

If someone looks for you on Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter – what will they find? If they search for a blog presence or social media involvement – what will they see?

If you’re not taking part in the conversation… it will go right on. Without you.

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I’ve posted about corporate use of Twitter before. I like the way it can build a brand’s position and personality.

I really liked this use of a response to a question from Jaunted by the Twitter face of @SouthwestAir (Christi) – and of course, she tweeted about it. Now, that’s a great way to use your Twitter account. They get it.

read more | digg story

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