I was asked by the Network of government library and information specialists (NGLIS) to run a workshop session on Social Media Tools for their 2009 Conference, held in London 3rd June 2009. I thought this might be an ideal opportunity to run the Social Media Game that David Wilcox and Beth Kanter had developed. I enlisted the support of my colleague Dave Briggs, who I know had run this game before, and set about preparing the cards in accordance with…
The following abstract is from “Social Networking Literacy Competencies for Librarians: Exploring Considerations and Engaging Participationâ€, Contributed Paper, ACRL 14th National Conference, Pushing the Edge: Explore, Engage, Extend, 14th March 2009 by Joe Murphy and Heather Moulaison. I thought it worth replicating and promoting here since it provides a consolidated perspective on some core competencies for social networking applicable to Librarians (the original intended audience) , and also Community of Practice facilitators/moderators or community managers who’s skill-set should embrace many…
Twitter is the fastest growing social network at the moment and gaining increasing credibility as the ‘killer app’ for 2009. Here Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, speaking at TED, describes how the project got started and how its development is continually shaped by user-driven innovations. From its original concept as a simple messaging tool it is increasingly being used to gather and disseminate information on news-breaking events. Sharing of information through the use of of hashtags is just one of the…
The IDeA Communities of Practice platform (CoPs) won first prize in its category at the National e-Government Awards in the prestigious setting of at the Guildhall, London on Tuesday 20th January. The e-Government awards are supported by the Cabinet Office, SOCITM and SOLACE, and recognise excellence in public sector IT and transformational e-Govt projects. See also John’s IDeA Blog for photos of John Hayes, Michael Norton, Lawrence Hall and me picking up the award. CoPs was short-listed as finalist in…
I came across this potentially useful compilation of the 100 most popular sites mashing up and remixing Twitter, as measured by the number of bookmarks at Del.icio.us. Thanks to the Museum of Modern Betas Labs for this list. twitter (13092) twittervision (4194 overall) twitterfeed (3557 overall) twhirl (3149 overall) twistori (2589 overall) tweetscan (2567 overall) twitter-search (2198 overall) tweetdeck (1977 overall) twitpic (1967 overall) hellotxt (1895 overall) twitterrific (1692 overall) twitterholic (1421 overall) tweetstats (1356 overall) quotably (1337 overall) twellow…
I’ve just picked up on (yet) another Twitter app called TwitchBoard. Twitchboard watches your Twitter-stream and notices anytime you post a url, and automatically sends the link to your Del.icio.us account. It represents the emerging class of cloud agents that are supposed to help us sort and search the massive volumes of data we interact with regularly. Others in this genre include Friendfeed, Stumble! and Digg (to name just a few). I may be in the minority here but I…
I attended (and presented at) the Butler Group “Information Management and Collaboration” event that was held in London on 14-15 May. Regrettably I couldn’t get to the first day of the event, so missed presentations on topics such as: Document collaboration using Sharepoint, and Next generation collaboration through BEA Systems portals Hence, I was left to ponder how much emphasis was given to creating and developing a collaborative culture in these presentations, or whether (as I suspect) the assumption is…
Tools for Communities Wiki A companion piece to a forthcoming book Stewarding Technologies for Communities of Practice by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White and John D. Smith. It collects knowledge about how Communities of Practice use different tools. Like all Wikis, this is a work in progress. It collects knowledge about how Communities of Practice use different tools. The vision is to provide a community perspective on these tools and their key features. GroupTweet GroupTweet piggy-backs on the Twitter service via…
This is getting to sound a bit like my hobby-horse. In response to a query from someone working in local government who wanted to know how they could use social networking sites to engage with their citizens, I felt compelled once again to remind them that technology by itself was not the answer. I know this is a very contentious thing to say, but you don’t need online social networking tools to engage with citizens. You could – for example…