Photo Competition: Deadline

Get clicking!

When I wrote the instructions for the 23 Things, I had no idea how people would be interacting with the tasks - and it's become clear that many of you are not able to jump straight into each Week's "Thing" at 9am on a Monday morning.

Of course that's absolutely fine - so I'm going to let the photo competition run until the end of Monday 22 April... hopefully that will give everyone plenty of time to put up a photo or two and (this is important!) post it in the 23 Things Southampton Flickr group, with the appropriate tag.

I know I haven't added any competition photos myself - I'll sort that out very soon... I've had a lot of work on, too :)

What You Need To Do

• Join Flickr
• Make "23 Things Soton" one of your contacts
• I'll then reciprocate, and invite you to the "23 Things Southampton" group
• You must then accept the invitation
• You can then add photos to the group - just remember to apply the relevant tag for the competition category you're entering

I apologise that there are quite a few steps - I'm afraid that's just how this process works.

Photography Competition

Take photo, win prize

If you read the instructions for the Flickr "thing" this week, you'll see that I'm running a photography competition. Well, thanks to my wonderful wife, I've now got the prizes sorted out.

From memory, there are three categories for you to submit photos to the competition, and each category winner will get a copy of their winning image in a 4" x 6" frame.

And the overall winner will get in addition the satisfaction of having been selected as the overall winner ;)

Celebration!

Let's face it, it's not always fun & games at work. I guess that's why they call it "work". But every now and then things work out just nicely - after years of struggling against barriers and "no entry" signs, you suddenly find that you're able to do what you've been wanting to do for so long. Those that you've felt have been holding you back, are all of a sudden giving you exactly the tools you need and want.

I'm sure it won't last - it can't, it just can't - so I'm making the most of it while I can. Oh, this feels soooooo good! And you know what? I can't even tell you what it is yet - you'll just have to be patient! So in the meantime, enjoy this wonderful little video...

Me? I'm heading into the weekend with a smile on my face, not worrying about whatever emails I get next week telling me I don't have quite the amount of freedom I think I have right now. But I don't care - that's for next week :)

Mendeley

References to manage? Get Mendeley!

I have to admit that even before we began, I'd already made up my mind about many of the Sot 23 Things resources. I am a geek - I've written blogs & recorded podcasts already; I joined Facebook in 2007 and Twitter in 2009; and most of the things we've looked at so far I'd already tried out, even if I hadn't done much with them. In fact, if it wasn't for the fact that I was asked to write instructions for a few of the "Things", I probably wouldn't have actually followed the Sot 23 Things programme.

But now I'm very glad I did. Because of Mendeley.

For sure, Mendeley fits into the category of "things I tried ages ago, but haven't looked at for ages" - so it's not that I hadn't heard about it. No, it's because revisiting this resource has come at a very opportune moment. In October I started an Open University degree in Computing & IT (I've long since harboured the desire to learn to program properly, I just haven't had the motivation to self-teach to the level I want to achieve).

The OU offers a couple of reference management options and, until now, I've been using RefWorks. It works reasonably well (but not as well as EndNote Web, for sure) - but in my last assignment I needed to three different citations from the same author and year... in Harvard (which I'm disappointed that we use - Vancouver is far superior, IMHO) you're supposed to reference them (Bloggs, 2013a), (Bloggs, 2013b) etc. And RefWorks couldn't handle it.

So I was starting to think that I'd need to invest in my own copy of EndNote - which was going to be over £70 if I waited until the autumn and the X7 version (the annual EndNote update cash cow is somewhat annoying). I had it in mind to investigate Mendeley - but whether I'd actually invest enough time and effort to do it justice, well that's debatable.

And then came Sot 23. I logged back into Mendeley and had a look around. Fair enough - it looked alright. I watched a few of the videos. Hmmm... it all seems to work quite nicely.

And then I discovered that I could download the OU Harvard style.

Suddenly, getting to grips with Mendeley took on a whole new level of importance. Call me shallow if you will, but now I had every reason to take this "Thing" rather seriously. And the more I investigated, the more I liked it. Here we go:

• The desktop application is pretty good. I can't say yet whether I think it's better than EndNote desktop or not - more investigation is required. But it's certainly very usable.
• The web application, on the other hand, is far better than EndNote Web. Much, much easier to use.
• At the moment, I think EndNote wins on the Word integration - the Mendeley equivalent of "Cite While You Write" doesn't have half the features that it's EndNote cousin. But I'll also acknowledge that EndNote CWYW has a number of bizarre "features" (i.e. bugs/design flaws) that Mendeley must be an improvement on.

And then you get to the...

Social Integration

...which is an area that EndNote hasn't even begun to explore.

In my mind, it's indicative of modern business/academic life. Big, old school organisations (like EndNote, like the University) just don't "get" social media. They don't understand how to use the new Web 2.0 tools, and don't think that sharing and integrating via the web is that important.

But organisations like Mendeley are built on Web 2.0 technology. They don't just use it - it's a fundamental part of why they exist. So Mendeley is more than just a platform for managing your references - you get to put up your own personal profile.

You can invite other members of your research group and you can share references and papers, and discuss them via Mendeley. So far, so standard.

But you can also join in with world-wide groups, discussing research topics of common interest. Let's say, for argument's sake, a group on "Open access and libraries". Now, all of a sudden, the social integration starts making a lot of sense - and you can see where Mendeley is doing very useful things that EndNote hasn't even considered.

So Mendeley received a very big "Thumbs Up" from me - I'll be investing more than a little time in this one for the next few years, I'm sure!

Delishless

Have you any idea what this is?

Ahh, the problem with names. You need to be memorable, you need to evoke the right feeling in your target audience. And (here's the rub) if you make any grandiose claims in your name, you'd better live up to them.

A few years back, Mitsubishi released the "Carisma", a car whose own charisma was notable only for its complete absence. Perhaps the idea was that the name would add a bit of personality to a design otherwise so bland it would make beans on toast look like a dinner party triumph.

If so, the ploy failed. It just served to highlight the ultra-blandness of this very average family car. Yes, you have to be careful with names. Which brings me to Delicious. A bookmarking service that allows you to keep your favourites online, accessible from any browser on internet-connected device. It's a great idea, and one I am all in favour of.

But sadly, my experience of using the service didn't excite my palate - in my view, this isn't a gourmet masterpiece - it's more like the half-arsed Come Dine With Me main course served up by the one with the big mouth and no talent for cooking.

What Is It? What Does It Do?

In all the other resources I've looked at for 23 Things, there's been a very clearly signposted set of pages and/or videos that told you what the service does, and got you started with using it. Just look at the introductory videos for Twitter for an excellent example of how to do this.

Delicious? Nothing. The help information is great if you already know what you're doing, and just want to be reminded of how to do it - but if you're a complete beginner, there's nothing that I could see that led you step-by-step through what to do.

Where Are My Links?

So I managed to drag the button onto my Chrome toolbar so that I could add a few bookmarks. I added a few links. I then went back and tried to visit a couple of pages that I'd bookmarked.

...

[Some time later]

...

It turns out that I need to click on the "Remember" menu. Which is odd, because that sounds like it's the place to go to get Delicious to remember a web page, not for me to visit a page I've bookmarked. In the Eurovision Labelling Contest, Delicious scores "nil points".

Editing Troubles

I went back to it this morning and added a few more bookmarks. I tried bookmarking the Uni's web Outlook site. This has a very simple base URL: www.outlook.soton.ac.uk - but if you go there you'll notice that your browser displays a far more complex URL, with lots of session information embedded in it.

No problem - I'll just bookmark it and then edit out the session info later.

Except that when I went to edit the bookmark in Delicious I could edit everything except the URL itself. Now maybe I could do some further searching for how to edit the URLs of Delicious bookmarks, and it could turn out that it can be done... but quite frankly, I can't be bothered.

Bring on Duncan Ballantyne:

"Delicious: Your help information isn't very helpful to newbies, editing links is more awkward and time consuming than in any browser - in short, you don't live up to your name. And that is why I'm out."

Facebook & Libraries

I find the explosion of social media into everyday life totally fascinating - and it's clear that individuals and organisations have a long way to go before we all get the hang of how to use this technology to its best advantage. I guess it's likely that by the time we've got it all figured out, the IT world will have long since moved on to something new and even more confusing!

Think for a moment how far we've come in such a short space of time.

If I summarise some information from this Web Designer Depot page, we get a timeline that looks something like this:

• 2002: Friendster launched
• 2003: Hi5 launched; LinkedIn launched; MySpace launched
• 2004: Facebook launched (initially to Harvard only, then expanded to include other schools/colleges)
• YouTube launched
• 2006: MySpace the biggest social network worldwide; Facebook opened up to everyone; Twitter launched
• 2007: iPhone launched
• 2008: Facebook the biggest social network worldwide

That's a lot of progress and change in the space of a decade - and when you look at the rise and fall of resources like MySpace and Friends Reunited, it becomes clear that nobody - not Facebook, not Twitter - can bank on maintaining their current market dominance without a lot of effort and development.

Now it didn't take too long for companies to get in on the social media act (well, not in comparison to the time it took them to wake up to the web in the first place) - and eventually even libraries got involved. And here's the big question: Why?

Off the top of my head, I can think of three reasons why a library would get on social media:

1. To make sure you "own" your own social media presence, rather than have someone else set it up for you (could be a member of staff... could even be a student)
2. To provide a means of contact for your users
3. To open up a new way of interacting with your users

1 Own Your Own Presence

Extremely important these days. The last thing you need is for an unofficial account to be created, and for people to think it's your official voice. You don't need to do much with your account - the mere fact that it's there is sufficient, with perhaps the odd post or two.

2. Provide a Means of Contact

If you wanted the bare minimum of social media presence, go for this option. You need only do the minimum input to your account - the main thing is to have it there so someone can contact you via Facebook or Twitter if they like.

3. Open a New Way of Interacting With Users

This is the option to go for if you're going to commit to getting properly involved. This option requires full engagement with your users, and with the social media platform. You need to be active, responsive, interesting - and most important you need to engage with your audience. It's simply not good enough to just post a few news stories in a one-way information exchange.

Where Do We Stand?

On Twitter, we've got 1 & 2 ticked - but that's absolutely as far as it goes. On Facebook, 1 & 2 are definitely ticked, and if I was being generous, I might give us half a tick for 3 (but that's being generous).

If we are happy to only achieve points 1 & 2, then job done - we can pat ourselves on the back and get on with other things. A bit like the old portable TV in the kitchen, our social media presence can sit in the corner gathering dust. It works after a fashion, but it's not our main TV, and when that really great programme comes on, we're not all going to head off to the kitchen and sit round the portable when we could be on the sofa in front of the 42" plasma.

But what if we did want to go for Point 3? Well, that would require a lot of work - and it would require us to fully embrace the change in approach that social media dictates. In brief:

• Post often
• Post about what we want our users to know
• But also post things that our users want to know
• Post about what's happening in the library - not just formal events, but day-to-day life
• Post about the public goings-on
• And also about what's happening behind the scenes - the stuff we're doing that our users wouldn't normally know about

And most important of all:

• Be human
• Don't be a bland, boring organisation
• Demonstrate that the library is run by ordinary people, for the benefit of all our users - develop a personality - if we're having a cake sale in the staff room to raise money for a charity, get that on Facebook

People want to engage with other, real people - not faceless organisations. If you want an organisational social media presence to generate worthwhile interactions with people, then it needs to be more like a real person, not a corporate nonentity.

23 Things Preparation Done!

I think that this morning I finally managed to finish preparing the last of the 23 Things tasks I was assigned. Yes, I'm afraid everyone has two more assignments from me - coming up in a couple of weeks' time we'll be looking at Flickr and Creative Commons.

I got the Flickr task sorted last week (though I've yet to work out what amazing prizes I'll be giving for the photography competition!) - and I thought I'd got the Creative Commons task sorted as well. But over the weekend I discovered a short YouTube video that includes an interview with one of the co-founders of Creative Commons, and I just had to add in a link to it.

I say "I discovered" - I mean it got mentioned in the OU assignment that I was putting together over the weekend. This year I started a Computing & IT degree with the OU - and although the first module has been rather basic, it nonetheless been very interesting, and a number of things we've looked at have come in handy for the 23 Things tasks I've written.

I'm not going to add a link to the video here - you'll have to wait until 3 March for that - but I particularly want to mention it because in addition to Creative Commons, it also looks at two other resources: The Creators Project and Kickstarter.

I hadn't heard of The Creators Project before - but it looks fascinating, and I think I'll have an explore of that in due course (I can see our WSA colleagues spending a bit of time on the site, if they've not discovered it already!).

I had heard of Kickstarter before - indeed, I've recently backed a Kickstarter project myself. This is a really interesting way of helping creative projects get funding, and I think it's a wonderful example of how the internet can really help people achieve things that they couldn't before - to the benefit of everyone involved.

In fact, I think it's so good I really want to start up a Kickstarter project of my own. If only there was something I could do that was worthy of becoming a project!

What it really brings home to me is that there are so many things out there on the internet that are deserving of our attention in the 23 Things programme, it's a shame that we can only look at a handful of them.

Library Twitterati

We've almost hit the end of Thursday in the 23 Things week of Twitter. Our @Uos23 Twitter account has 34 followers at the time of writing (only two of whom are spam), and we've had some good discussion over the past few days.

It's been rather more hard work than I'd expected or intended - and I have to admit that after putting in a lot of effort in the first three days, today I was feeling a bit flat. That said, I was hoping that by now people would be finding their own feet - and I tried to encourage people to retweet posts from other people that they were following outside of the 23 Things participants.

That was important, I felt - because to get a proper flavour of Twitter you really need to get involved in conversations, and you need to follow people who tweet (at least in part) on topics you're interested in. I totally appreciate that that is very hard for people to do if this week is their first ever experience of Twitter. After all, I well remember my first exploratory steps into Twitter, and at first I didn't go much on it either.

But some time later I came back to it - and eventually I kind of got the hang of it, and now I check it a lot, and tweet a fair bit too. Nothing staggeringly important - yes, I'm one of the many who mostly talk rubbish. Or football (and I'm aware that some will consider those to be one and the same!).

I do follow a few serious accounts - but the problem I have (and I do think that this is true for many people who use Twitter, or who are put off from using it) is that it's so incredibly easy to be overwhelmed by tweets.

I like Ben Goldacre, and a few other sciencey/evidence based mediciney accounts - but my timeline very quickly gets inundated with messages. Some of which are very interesting, some of which are not. And it's very hard to sort out one from the other. And go away from Twitter for a day or two and you have no hope at all of catching up on everything you've missed.

So to sum up: I use Twitter; I like Twitter; It can be really useful to find information that you wouldn't find elsewhere; But I do also accept that it takes time to get used to; And I accept that it's far from perfect.

I hope everyone has found this Twitter thing interesting and at least vaguely useful - even if it's just to the point that you know what Twitter actually is and how it works now.

And maybe, just maybe one of our participants might continue using Twitter beyond 5pm on Friday...

Long Loan Competition

I've just seen this post by Sarah Lund, a fellow 23 Things Soton blogger... and as I pointed out, in our library the book wouldn't actually be overdue (according to our current loan rules, so long as nobody recalled it).

That got me thinking - I have about 30 years until I retire, so if I could find a really obscure book I'd still be a long way off having had it for 55 years. But with the retirement age only likely to go upwards, there's a possibility that perhaps a newer member of staff could actually manage to borrow a book for that length of time.

Someone starting at the age of 16 would need to still have it at the age of 71. It's a bit of a slow burner in competition terms, I'll admit :)

What is the Point of Twitter?

In setting up this week's tasks on Twitter, I've deliberately focused on some lighthearted topics for discussion: favourite films, things you've always wanted to do and the inevitable cat pictures (you do know that cats rule the internet, don't you?).

But I do run the danger of just convincing you that Twitter is only good for trivial, pointless things. Silly pictures, bad jokes, what I'm having for dinner.

It isn't.

Well, it could be if that's all you're interested in - but it doesn't have to be that way (sorry - I couldn't resist!)

If you only go out looking for celebrity news, then don't be surprised if that's all you get. But if you want to use it for a more serious purpose then you'll discover that there's a lot more to Twitter than just cat pictures (nice as they are). Your experience of Twitter will be driven by what you search for, who you follow, and what you tweet about.

So if you'd like to experience a side of Twitter that's a bit more substantial, adjust your use accordingly. Me? I like sciencey things and evidence based medicine, so I follow people like Brian Cox and Ben Goldacre. I also follow the accounts of several Southampton police stations.

I also follow the account of my OU tutor... who doesn't tweet too much about our course, but instead is quite politically vocal - which in itself is fascinating to read.

You'll find lots of library and HE people on Twitter, and plenty of discussion on topics that are of interest to people working in academic libraries.

If we get enough 23 Things Soton people tweeting this week, I might try and kick off a more serious topic for discussion - but that's not to say it has to come from me: if you want to start a discussion topic of your own, just go ahead :)

Twitter Visibility

The Twitter section of 23 Things has kicked off, and hasn't taken long for a very important question to be asked...

@uos23 Can anyone see this on the list?
— Pam Wake (@choccypam) February 11, 2013

 I sent Pam a reply - but I want to expand on that here, as I think it needs more detail than you can fit into (several!) 140 character messages.

Essentially tweets are very public messages. It might feel like you're having a private discussion with friends, but a more accurate picture would be of you writing a message to your friend on a post-it note, and sticking it on a park wall. Your friend can read it, but so can anyone else who happens to wander past the wall today, or at any time in the future.

It's this very public accessibility of tweets that makes the service so powerful... but which can also land people in hot water about what they write.

The Basics

When you write a tweet, it automatically appears on the timeline of anyone who follows you - unless you start it with someone else's username.

So everyone who follows you will automatically see that message.

But your message can also be found by anyone who runs a search on any word or hash tag that you've included in your message. So potentially it's viewable by anyone on Twitter.

Scary? Perhaps. But remember that Twitter is a deliberately public medium. If you want to have private conversations, Twitter is not the place. The whole point of Twitter is to have your voice heard - which is why people put hash tags on - it's done to make their tweet more likely to be found and read by complete strangers.

Browsing Messages

People can also see what you've tweeted if they find your profile. They can look at your Twitter home page and click on the list of your tweets.

This is a really useful feature if you've just got a new follower... see what they've tweeted and find out if they're actually a spam account, just a random person, or somebody you know in real life.

Tweeting Others Directly

If you send a message directly to someone else, you normally start that tweet with their username, e.g.:

@ricpaul Great #saintsfc result on Saturday!

Here, only people who follow both you and @ricpaul will have that message automatically added to their Twitter timeline. (But remember it's still perfectly findable through the other means mentioned above.)

But what if you want everyone to see your message to someone else?

In that case, start your message with a full stop:

.@ricpaul Great #saintsfc result on Saturday!

Because the message doesn't now start with a username, everyone who follows you will now see your tweet in their timeline, whether or not they follow @ricpaul

(In fact it could be any character, but the full stop is used by convention because it's unobtrusive.)

Direct Messages

If you do want to send a private message to someone, then you can "direct message" them. But you can only do this if you follow that person, and they follow you as well.

Protecting Your Account

If you are feeling nervous about going public on Twitter, then you can protect your tweets. This means that your messages will only be viewable by your followers.

But it also means that you will need to approve every request to follow you, and nobody can retweet any of your messages.

I can see why people might want to do that... but it kind of defeats the whole point of being on Twitter in the first place, in my opinion.

Don't Be Scared!

I hope this has clarified a few things - my main message about experimenting with Twitter is not to be scared. Get out there and tweet! The fun of Twitter only really appears when you've built up a few followers and had a few discussions - so try following a few people who talk about subjects you're interested in.

Search on a few hash tags that relate to subjects you're interested in, and reply to a few people and retweet a few messages that you like.

It will probably take more than a week to really get into Twitter properly if you've not been using it before now - but give it a go... you might just find that you like it :)

Twitter Task

Twitter is about communication. Very short communication, I grant you - but communication nonetheless. So in preparing the Twitter task I've tried very hard to encourage discussion and give you all inspiration for things to tweet about.

The task worksheet has one topic in it, which will start a two-part activity running throughout the week. On Wednesday I've got a second topic that I'll unleash on everyone.

But I also have a couple of mini-topics that I'll mention on Monday - both on the Sot 23 Things blog, and on the UoS23 Twitter account.

I won't say much more at the moment... you'll just have to wait until Monday :)

Browser Choices

Since I wrote the instructions for the Browser part of "23 Things", I guess I ought to write about my thoughts on this...

Internet Explorer

Quite simply, I can't stand it. I use it under protest at work, only when I really have to. There are a few things that force me to use it (primarily TeamSite, which we use to update the website), and my computer doesn't seem to be happy unless my default browser for opening links is IE.

So I'm not able to escape it completely - but I try my best to avoid it whenever possible. And I wouldn't dream of using it at home.

Firefox & Chrome

Instead of using IE, I prefer either Firefox or Chrome... and I don't have a massive preference for one over the other. I guess I use Chrome a bit more than Firefox - it does seem to live up to its blurb of being a very fast browser - but I do still use Firefox as well, both at home and at work.

Work vs. Home

I have to say that I find the older browser versions we use at work really frustrating. I find more and more websites complaining that the browser I'm using it too old for them to guarantee that their site will work effectively - indeed, every time I start Firefox it reminds me that it needs updating.

It seems daft that I work for a big organisation that's really IT-focused... and yet I can go home and get a far better internet experience on my personal computer than I can on my work PC.

Yes, I understand that our IT people have concerns about stability, support, security and all that - so I'm under no illusion that any of this is simple... but speaking purely as an end user, I find that having to work with old and outdated tools is frustrating.

Rant over :)

Black Sheep

One wrong move, and these boys will have your throat out!

New Zealand. Sheep. Genetic experiments. What could possibly go wrong?

Black Sheep is a low-budget, but fun entry into the catalogue of zombie movies - and one that's carved it's own little niche by basing itself on sheep, the most numerous inhabitants of New Zealand.

I desperately, desperately want to say it was brilliant... but it wasn't. It wasn't awful, bad or even "meh" - I'd give it a "quite good" in a positive tone of voice.

I didn't have any problem with the effects (I actually rather enjoyed the use of obvious puppetry), nor with the storyline and dialogue. This was clearly a low budget effort from the off, and I'm very happy to accept that as a viewer.

Where I think it failed is that it couldn't make up its mind whether it should be seriously scary, or deliberately funny (and it's a mistake I think a lot of films in this genre make).

If you want to make a scary movie, then I think these days you have to do it really well. Cheap effects, poor  scripts, poor acting... all these things seriously detract from the quality of the film. Of course you can have humour in it - but if you want to make a scary movie, then that has to be at the core of the film you want to make.

If you're going to make a funny movie, then you have lots more leeway to use dodgy effects, an obvious storyline and predictable scary moments. But you have to be funny regularly throughout the film.

But get caught in the middle and you end up with a bit of a rubbish scary movie, and a bit of a rubbish comedy movie... and that's kind of where Black Sheep ends up.

Personally, I think they should have accepted that they were working with a low budget and therefore making a really good quality, scary movie was going to be difficult (unless they had an exceptionally talented crew, and committed 100% to the scariness throughout). I think they should have taken a good look at Shaun of the Dead and upped the humour content.

Not that I'm suggesting that "funny" is easy. Not a bit of it - it's very hard to do well (and Shaun is a harsh comparison, because that team has been together for quite some years, doing the excellent Spaced). But if you have obviously rubber sheep attacking people, I don't know that you've got much of a choice.

It's definitely one of those films that I enjoyed, but which leaves me frustrated that I'm not a movie maker myself - I'd love to redo Black Sheep and make it the brilliant film that it could be.

Zombie Ants

I was reminded of this the other day... if you thought that zombies were pure fiction, think again...

Now the classic zombie outbreak of filmlore involves reanimated corpses - and whilst that is firmly in the realms of the supernatural, those wishing to create reality-based "zombie-style" stories head straight to viral pandemic flu outbreaks. But here is an example in nature where living being are, to all intents and purposes, being turned into real-life zombies.

Scary stuff, eh?

I'm Going Blog-Eyed

I've spent a few minutes adding RSS feeds from all the Sot23 bloggers... and now I'm meandering my way through everyone's contributions.

It's excellent work so far from you all: I'm pleased with how people have been managing to overcome the initial hurdle of getting Blogger figured out!

It will take me a while to skim-read through all the posts so far (hence "blog-eyed"!), but I want to see what people are writing - and spot if people are having problems.

Needless to say, if anyone does have any problems then I'm happy to hear about them - no promises, but I'll certainly do my best to sort hiccups out.

I have to admit that until now my diary hasn't allowed me to devote the time I'd have liked to Sot23, but hopefully I'll have a bit more time in the next few weeks (trip to RBH, Reading aside).

Having Fun with Twitter

So I've done (with the help of Paula) the blogging parts of 23 Things, and I've also come up with the guidance for the "browsers" part as well. If you thought that bit wasn't overly interesting, I'm sorry... I did my best with it, but it wasn't the sexiest material to work with!

However, you'll shortly be discovering more about Twitter - and I'm hoping that you'll find that a lot more interesting. I've got a few things up my sleeve to get some discussion going - I really hope that everyone will join in.

My big concern is that Twitter is a very open, public platform - and it's completely possible that people outside the Sot 23 Things programme will interact with one or more of our participants. There's not a lot that anyone can do about it - and if it happens it will probably be nice and interesting interactions.

But it is possible (perhaps even likely?) that some people will get hit with spam tweets. I don't think there's anything we can do to prevent that, so in the "Thing 10" guidance I've put in some very clear advice on this kind of thing: don't worry, just block.

That worry aside, I'm hoping that it'll be a week that people will really engage with and enjoy. I'm looking forward to it!

This is a photo from the third blogging training session - I took it on my phone and then uploaded it directly to Blogger, via the Blogger app (available for both Apple and Android devices).

I've added this text later, though I could have done so at the time. Cool, eh?

Training Day 3

Training Day 3 is going rather well so far - I think that using 4075 really helps, as does having a smaller group of people to teach.

It's still a lot of work to get everyone started, but Emma is doing a great job helping out.

I've added this picture of The Itchen Bridge because I rather like it

First Training Session

We had the first training session on blogging today... which was... "interesting".

Unfortunately the weather threw the whole thing into chaos - I was late in, and Paula couldn't make it in at all. Given that Paula was looking after the bulk of the training on Blogger, that was a bit of a problem!

Between trying to work out what we needed to cover on the fly, and trying to solve the various problems and questions that came up - well, it wasn't easy and it certainly wasn't the smoothest training session I've ever delivered.

I think we kind of got there in the end - we covered the basics of getting a blog started, adding a page, adding a post, and inserting links and images.

That's just about enough for people to be able to blog themselves - though we didn't talk about adding labels/tags, and we didn't get to look at WordPress. I'm also terribly worried that I've confused everyone who was there!

That said, everyone will be able to read through the PDF guide - which I hope I've managed to make far more clear than this morning's session!

It is the beginning of the end of the Christmas chocolate...

I have to say that I'm rather proud of this photo...

It is the beginning of the end of the Christmas chocolate..., a photo by Ric Paul on Flickr.

I took it with my phone, using the flash, and then used a bit of Instagram magic to emphasize the orange top and exaggerate the dark background.

The result is quite good, if I do say so myself!