Mini Conference Planning

At last planning is underway for my mini-conference as part of the FO2010 course.

I've chosen the topic of cultural competency in the online environment as it is one that has come up several times during the course with our group of students being from many varied backgrounds, cultures and countries.

With Sarah's help I'm excited to have secured a guest presenter, Kate Timms-Dean, a senior lecturer from the Treaty Education & Training Unit within the Educational Development Centre at Otago Polytechnic.

The mini-conference has been set for Thursday 11th November 2010, from 2pm-3pm NZ time (World Clock) and will take place in the Elluminate Meeting Room.

Now I need to start planning the promotion of the event and providing details for how folks can join in.

More to follow in due course.

Twitter to date...

I signed up to Twitter in May this year and after watching how it works for a while, I eventually took the plunge and started to tweet. I'm now at the stage of tweeting fairly regularly (for me that is still only 2-3 times a week) which of course pales into insignificance compared to some Tweeters!

I tweet from my own account (@SharonSchindler) and also on occasion from my work account (@csp_otago). And I'm feeling part of an online community.

Just when I thought I was getting to grips with it, they launched a new version with more stuff for me to grasp - once again it is about lifelong learning and adapting to new ways.

I find it great as a quick and easy way to follow headlines and hot topics, but not so great if those you want to hear about are not using it.

I've more or less mastered using lists on there which I find great for following specific groups of people/businesses. The same applies to hashtags for easy real time results and up to date news for specific interest areas.

I did join in the FO2010 Twitter class session, but found it a challenge to follow who was talking to who and if anyone was actually answering the questions posed, it was a little hectic and hard to follow and probably not a platform I would consider using at this stage for online meetings.

I think I've now added the Twitter widget to my blog post!

Tools, tactics and tips for communicating in an online world

This Google Doc spreadsheet is available publicly on the web for anyone to view and edit. It was a resource developed by Robin Gurney from Altex Internet Marketing and a group of conference delegates at the European Ecotourism Conference in Estonia

Thanks to my social media course tutor Tom Walter for bringing it to my attention. Now you can add to it if you wish and download as a reference tool.

Content, content, content

After reading the Introduction to Blogging by Wordpress Codex, I instantly thought of the old adage often applied to real estate of "location, location, location", but in the blogging sense it is definitely "content, content, content"...

Making it together

I just liked this post from Seth's Blog on Your ecosystem. To me it is all about making it together... And this FO2010 course really attempts to do just that.

AWOL

I'm back on-line with FO2010 after a bit of AWOL time. Spending this glorious sunny Arrowtown afternoon in front of my computer rather than getting the garden ready for spring, but if I don't catch up today, then when???

The good news is I feel it has been time well spent. I've been catching up on others blog posts through my blog reading list (I subscribe to 5 blogs) and although frustrating with the lengthy times it seems to take to load them up and then post comments, I've enjoyed the posts.

I signed up to a Social Media for Business short course a few weeks ago and am realising how much cross referencing there is between it and this FO2010 course. Still loads to learn, and am working through one little step at a time, e.g. simple things like today I added my location to the map on WikiEducator and yesterday got a webcam so I can use the video function on Skype. Already I can see how much has come together for me and can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It is time to start thinking about the mini-conference...