A moment of introspection: anti-social? (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

In light of my departure from Snow I've had a few chats here and there, not all of them brimming with positivity. Of course some of my colleagues aren't happy to see me go, but there's also some other stuff that I hadn't given thought.

When asked for a reason why I chose to leave for another company (where I'd essentialy be doing the same work), my knee-jerk reply was that I was missing personal contact. The company has grown rather large over the past two years and I was supposedly missing the personal touch. The reproach that I received was that I myself am responsible for this situation. My lack of motivation for IT, coupled with my ambition of teaching have led to my isolation within the company. Apparently some colleagues even avoid me because of this. Of course, that's a bitter pill to swallow.

Now that I've mulled over this a little bit, I agree with the senior who expressed these thoughts. I agree that I've secluded myself from my colleagues and that I've shown little interest in the company as a whole. I also don't particularly care for all the IT/Linux conversations that happen at each compulsory meeting. Due to my changing ambitions I feel alienated from my colleagues, yet I also feel little drive to connect with them. I guess it's safe to say that Snow isn't the company for me anymore.

I've always been a bit of a recluse, choosing close contact with a tightly knit group of friends over casual and abundant contact with acquaintances and colleagues. Does this make me anti-social? Maybe. But I've also shown on many occasions that I can fit right into any social undertaking and that I can even -lead- on such an occasions (Anime 200x anyone?).

So... Do I feel safe switching from one IT company to another? Of course not! I'd much rather be teaching :) But in this case I think I'm making a rather safe switch, because i will be working with a close friend of mine. Someone I -do- definitely care about :)

Raimond, thanks for making me think. I needed the nudge to wake me up ;)

EDIT:
Let me add my personal conclusion. No, I am not anti-social. If I were, why the heck would I choose to become a teacher?! Teaching, in high school, IT or otherwise, requires social involvement and I am all too happy to give it. It's just that I will now need to re-find the delicate balance at work.

Posted in: anti-social , introspection , social , work

“Social Media Club” has Nuked the Fridge (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

*sigh*

I heard the news today that Chris Heuer, of Social Media Club, has formed a “Board of Directors” of 42 people to, well, I don’t really know what they’re going to do…

Maybe you can figure it out. Read this paragraph, and try to make sense of it. While you’re at it, try to deduce if it came from a “social media” group, or some barking mad 20th century corp-speak organizational announcement:

The new interim board has been charted (sic) to address several key organizational and strategic deliverables, including development of membership goals, acceleration of local chapter development, increase in adoption of industry standards and implementation of a new legal structure to enhance future growth … The board will also focus on increasing its research efforts and strengthening relationships with other organizations such as the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) and the International Association for Business Communicators (IABC). The interim board’s work will be completed once the club reorganizes as a new entity, and holds an election amongst its members for a formal Board of Directors.

I consider myself friends with several people on this list, but I can’t make ANY sense of this.

Good thing Social Media Club is “reorganizing into a new entity”, because it’s surely dead if it’s spewing stuff like this. And I don’t like the looks of the “new entity”. Looks like a lot of big, corporate, inhuman, non-sensical entities I already know…

Posted in: blog , club , corpspeak , cutlture , media , social

Twitter is Old and Busted. FriendFeed is the New Hotness. (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

(This post started as an email to @verso on Twitter, in response to her question “I’m wondering how much longer #pdx will take it from Twitter. “Come on baby, you know I love you” won’t work forever will it? Alternatives?“) I had been trying to reply via Twitter itself, but it’s been either down or eating my updates - oh, the irony!)

FriendFeed finally sucked me in this week. I finally “got” it. It’s the next logical step up from Twitter, because it is a superset of Twitter - I see my friends tweets, often before I do through Twitter itself, and I can reply to them once, and have it go to both places (FriendFeed and Twitter). Plus there’s so much MORE FriendFeed can do - import and show people’s blogs, shared items, photos, etc. It kicks ass, seriously. I highly recommend you give it a try. Twhirl, the popular Twitter client,  works with it (though I haven’t got that working well yet), and http://fftogo.com is an awesome mobile interface for it for your phone (looks and works great on my iPhone).

The thing that got me to accept it (I’ve been resisting for a while now) was there was finally enough “social gravity” - enough of my network was participating there, and there were conversations happening on FF (a LOT of them) that I was totally missing out on because I was staying completely in Twitter.

It’s not a Twitter-alike, with a few differentiating features (like Jaiku and Pownce). It’s a whole new, better, crack-like way to interact with people. It is the evolution of what Twitter started.

I’m jabancroft on FriendFeed - feel free to subscribe to me. I’m still going to use Twitter as my “micropost” method, until it croaks completely. But in my FriendFeed, you’ll also see my blog posts. photos I upload to Flickr, things I share on Google Reader (with my commentary), and more. And the coolest thing about it all is that there’s CONVERSATION happening around ALL of those things. It’s amazing. I love it.

So come join me. You don’t have to give up Twitter, or Jaiku, or whatever. You can connect them up in FriendFeed. But don’t limit yourself to just one channel of conversation, when you can have so much MORE on FriendFeed. It’s fun, it’s easy, it makes me smarter, and a big part of my network is already there. I’m convinced!

Update: Phil mentioned below that he posted his comment to this on FriendFeed, and that reminded me of something. If you’re not a FriendFeed user, you’d be missing out on the discussion around this post that’s happening there. That’s why I’ve installed Glenn Slavin’s excellent FriendFeed Comments WordPress Plugin. If you are looking at this post on its own page, where you can see the “normal” comments people have left, scroll down, and you’ll also see the “Likes” and comments that people have left for this post on FriendFeed. Post get sucked up into FriendFeed, and great discussion happens there, but this plugin brings the relevant discussion back here, to the original post, so you don’t miss out if you’re not on FriendFeed. I love it.

Posted in: blog , friendfeed , jaiku , network , pownce , sharing , social , tools , twitter