The Detail Department

You are here: Home / Archives for twitter

Wow what a year

by

This part “Christmas Message”, part Summary of the year and part thank you to all the fantastic wonderful people I have met and hung out with this year.

But, wow, what an up and down year this has been… I feel in some ways that this Christmas is a deja vu of last Christmas (ie being unemployed), but there has been so much that has happened this year that things are quite different this Christmas. So here’s a bit of a rundown of the year.

Job(s)

Well, I’ve had 2 jobs this year – a Consultant at Hands-on Systems, which I loved, but left after 3 months as I was headhunted by ProjectCentre for my perfect job, combining my IT and Construction Skills. That job lasted just over 3 months, and I loved it, and thought I was doing a great job and getting the product ready for release and then I was “retrenched” – I won’t go on about it, but I’m still very angry and upset about that one.

So back to the horrible world of job hunting and recruiters – I can’t say how much I hate job hunting! I have such specialised skills that recruiters won’t even look at my resume because it just does not “tick all the boxes”. I have found some great recruiters that really do their job well, but some of them are so bad I just have to hang up. The problem is that my Ideal job that is combining IT and Construction just does not exist as construction companies don’t think that they need to spend money on IT. However, if I can get in there and start working, they see how valuable my contribution is. For me the biggest hurdle is getting to the interview stage. I tend to do much better once I’m in front of a potential employer.

With the impact of the GFC, I’m concentrating my job hunting efforts in IT rather than Construction as I think that IT may weather the financial storm better, but I won’t rule out construction – I won’t rule out any job doing anything as long as it pays the mortgage.

I have been doing some great work on contract for the few months I’ve been out of work, and I’ve enjoyed doing it, but I can not earn enough to live… right now I’m just earning enough to keep a few bills paid and living very frugally. Also, I hate contracting. I hate not knowing where the next few hours work is coming from. I hate working alone (although I do have a small team for my current work which is good). So I do really need to find a full time job that pays well, so I can feel settled and secure once again.

In January I have some more contracting opportunities and I will be back to the job hunting again, and will try some other tactics rather than dealing with recruiters too much. So here’s hoping that 2009 will be the year I get a good job where I earn enough, I am valued as an employee and I love going to work. And I wish that for everyone else too!

Wellbeing

Another up and down year this year… I’ve had a persistent nagging bronchial infection for a lot of the year which has not been great and it curtailed playing Underwater Hockey for much of the year. Luckily there was a good stint of a few months mid year where I felt great and well, and that coincided with my Trip… so that worked well.

I’ve still been doing Feldenkrais all year, have been doing it now for at least 15 years and still get so much out of it. It’s rare for me to miss a Saturday class and I love going and love catching up with all the people in the class for coffee after.

I’ve also been doing my Nordic walking most weeks. We now have only a very small group of regular walkers and it’s difficult to keep the group running but I enjoy it so much I will keep it going.

But overall, this year has been the worst health I’ve had for many years and I really hope 2009 will be much much better.

Travel

Well this is the year that I finally did it… finally got to London, Europe and Dubai. I now feel like a real member of the human race having at least seen London and Paris, and Dubai was amazing.

Despite the GFC and the dollar crashing a few weeks before I left, I had a great time and loved the whole trip. I won’t go into a lot of detail here as I’ve written a few blog posts about it already and you can a selection of my photos on Flickr.

The highlights of my trip were Bilbao, the Be2Camp in London, Wales with Emily, Paris and Dubai.

I would love to travel again now… so hopefully an opportunity will arise some time in 2009!

Social

This is the aspect of my life that has been the best year ever! I have met such wonderful new friends this year and have been to so many great events that it has just been so great. This is mainly due to Twitter and the Sydney Tech Community which is thriving. Some of the excellent events this year have been

  • New Years Eve (thanks @ceibner)
  • Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum (thanks to @trib for the ticket)
  • Earth Hour Girls night out
  • Regular STUB events (thanks @happener, @funkycoda and @alegrya for organising), including many Picnics too
  • Girl Geek Dinners (@damana you rock!)
  • Various catch up’s with @trib and @mspecht when they have been in Sydney
  • Interesting South No. 2
  • CodeCamp Oz (we missed @ceibner but I had a great time with the boys)
  • Demos Happen Here Comp (thanks to @rog24 and @coatsy)
  • PubCamp (thanks to @jedwhite and @mediamum)
  • TechEd Week, Women in Technology event (even though I did not attend TechEd)
  • Web 2.o University, Web Directions Week and AussieTUB (even though I did not attend Web Directions itself)
  • GirlTUB x 2 (excellent evenings out with the twitter girls)
  • Sydney Open Coffee (thanks @kimheras for an excellent idea)
  • SBTUG (Sydney Business and Technnology User Group, thanks to @craigbailey & @aussienick)
  • BarCamp x 2 (one which I helped organised and the other thanks to the org team esp @funkycoda)
  • NSW KM Forum (thanks to @cheiftech for including me on the panel at the last minute)
  • WebBlast (thanks @russmaxdesign and @happener)
  • Very regular catch up’s with twitter peeps – Nano STUB’s Micro STUB’s, Mini STUB’s

I’m sure there are others that I have not mentioned, but wow, that is some list!

And the excellent non-tech events

  • Family Wedding in Tumut in September
  • Various trips up to the Gold Coast / Brisbane

And a very special mention to the people and events during my trip

  • GGD in London
  • Be2camp in London (thanks to @eepaul, @pbroviak and @martinbrown)
  • Green Drinks in London (excellent evening)
  • Dinners out with people in Barcelona during World Architecture Festival
  • Wonderful Family and Friends catch-ups

Next year is shaping up for another big one with

  • New Years Eve again (thanks to @ceibner again)
  • CupCake Camp in Feb
  • More STUB’s
  • Another BarCamp or 2
  • The remotest possibility of a Be2Camp in Sydney some time
  • Definitely more GirlTUB’s and GGD’s
  • We definitely need another Wild Wicked Wanton Women of the Web 2.0 event (looking at you @silkcharm)
  • I really hope to get to more conferences in 2009
  • I need to start to get to Social Coffee on Friday mornings (thanks to @servantofchaos that organises this)
  • ooh and my Family trip in May to celebrate my Mum and Dad’s 50th Wedding Aniversary, and a family Wedding in March

And I just have to make special mention to the biggest group of wonderful people on twitter this year that I have had the pleasure to hang with

The girls: @ceibner, @kcarruthers, @silkcharm, @pixel8ted, @alegrya, @misswired, @mediamum, @damana, @headwellred, @christydena, @bronwen, @allidc, @zuzu, @aussieAna, @dekrazee1

The the guys: @trib, @funkycoda, @dizzystuff, @lstoll, @aussienick, @cadbloke, @angusscown, @nickhac, @stillgherian @apostrophepong, @snarkyplatypus, @mpesce, @nathanaelb, @rog42, @coatsy, @ryancross, @fush, @flungabunga, @seancarmody, @marclehmann, @sethyates, @jedwhite, @maniacd, @jamesbreeze, @mspecht, @aDB, @warlach, @coliwilso, @liako, @eskimo_sparky, @gregdwyer

The UK Peeps: @martinbrown, @eepaul, @melstarrs, @jodiecarnegie, @amcewen (and of course @pbroviak virtually)

And all the Perth / Melb / Canberra peeps that were around for AussieTUB and I’ve probably left many people off the list, but thanks to you all!

Wow, I really hope 2009 is even more social, I meet even more people and the Sydney Tech community has many many more great events!

Favorite Twitter Articles

by

I was just sending a new friend on twitter some links to some of my fav recent twitter articles so I thought I would post them here.

Enjoy!

Live Blogging Tools

by

I’m researching how we will be doing Live Blogging for Be2Camp coming up in London in October so I did a bit of hunting around for tools.

This may be a bit ambitious but this is what we want to do:

  • Have people participate live in the room and have a twitter backchannel (hopefully up on the screen)
  • Have people participate virtually via streaming video and live blogging and be able to contribute to the discussions
  • Have people participate virtually via SecondLife and be able to contribute and have discussions
  • Have people present to all audiences from SecondLife
  • Maybe have people present to all audiences from the web (we haven’t had a specific request for this yet, but it would be good to offer it).

So here is some of the products and services I found.

Live Blogging

  • CoverItLive – this one looks really good and really polished – and it can go on our website and it can have multiple people commenting . Not sure if you have to log in to comment however.
  • Tangler is an Aussie Startup from here in Sydney and they have quite a mature product, but it’s a pain that you have to log in. Here is a look at a Tangler discussion embedded in a website

However, one advantage of twitter is that people can join in the discussion via text (CoverItLive has a mobile site), so I think it’s still good to have a twitter back channel and to promote upcoming sessions on twitter (and maybe via CoverItLive also).
For the twitter feed Hashtags is great as you need to opt in, and it tracks private accounts like mine but it doesn’t work at the moment due to issues with the Twitter API, so I’m not sure if it will work for us. Of course you can follow any hashtag or word via Summize (aka search.twitter.com) but for me that is useless as there is no way for me to join in as it does not track private accounts (I would love a twitter escape code that if this character was in the tweet then that tweet will join the main twitter stream).

One simple way would be to just show the @be2camp twitter stream up on a screen with an auto refresh using TwitRefresh and people just reply to @be2camp to join in the discussion – but, Like CoverItLive this requires someone to drive it, so not sure if it’s worth having both, but as this unconference was born from twitter, it would be a shame to not use twitter as part of the event.

Video

  • One of our unorganisers mentioned on twitter a few days ago that she successfully managed to import Veodia video into Second Life – this is great. See it in action here http://www.veodia.com/solutions_sl.html
  • Video updates from Mobile phones or camera’s on laptops can be done via Qik and 12 Seconds and both will autopost a link to twitter.
  • Live streaming can be done via UStream it works quite well and there is Mogulus which is much more polished and can be embedded on your site – but it also looks like it’s much more work than just set and forget.

Ustream is interesting – here is a link to a previous 2 web crew podcast that was recorded live and had a chat in Tangler and Ustream at the same time – it was a bit of a test and it’s a pain to log into either Tangler or Ustream or both, but if people are keen to contribute it works.

Suggestions

So right now my suggestion would be to use CoverItLive for text and hopefully Veodia can be used for both Live Streaming into SecondLife plus onto the website… it would be good if we can get a page with both of them together on one page for people not at the event and a page with just the text for people at the event.

Does anyone else have any ideas for Live Blogging and Live Streaming from our event?

some more twitter love

by

I’ve posted before about how much I love twitter, but a recent post about twitter from @rog42 made me think I need to post about twitter again. Then I saw a great video today by @missrogue on http://www.whatistwitter.com/ about how Twitter has changed her life.  So here are my thoughts….

I reckon that Twitter has fundamentally changed the way we, who are using twitter, communicate with the world. We are now so used to opening twitter at any point in the day to see what’s happening out there in the world and to check in with our friends.

Think about it… what would we do if we could not get that constant stream of communication with our friends? What would we do if twitter went down for an extended period of time or for good (although I think that is unlikely). We would set up another form of communication just like twitter to replace it! This way of communicating is just so… addictive… I think I would have trouble being without it now.

It’s not like blogs or facebook or anything else – blogs, even by RSS take a long time to read and you need to be paying attention. Facebook is just naff and you have to filter through all of the other crap just to get some decent information. (I may do a blog post on how much I HATE facebook). Twitter is Just Right – small snippets of information that you can focus on and become part of, or just let slip by into the ether if you are busy. I love it!

Also twitter has changed my life in so many more ways for the better, like meeting some absolutely amazing and wonderful people, getting much more involved in the Sydney Tech community and reaching out to chat to people in other parts of the country and the world.

Yes, I’m a twitter addict… This week at Interesting South www.interestingsouth.com they want us to come up with a 6 word bio for our name tags. I’ve decided on “twitter changed my life for good” or something like that (will try and think of something a bit better before the event.

My Ode to Twitter

by

I just want to say how much I love twitter.

Over the past few weeks of working from home and with the next few weeks also probably working from home, it has been great to be on Twitter.

It is like working in an office, where there are these conversations going on in the background and you can join in if you want or just leave them be. My Twitter friends have been my company in the past few weeks.

But if you need some quiet time you can turn twitter off, as it can be a bit distracting sometimes (you can’t turn office colleagues off unfortunately sometimes).

I only have around 30 or so that I’m following but they all feel like friends, and when I was at MODM in Melbourne a few weeks ago I got to meet a few people IRL that I’d only met on Twitter before. It is really interesting meeting someone that you have been following on twitter, it’s like you know them already just a little bit.

Also, I have had the most wonderful support from my Twitter friends over the past few weeks, and have seen how they have supported other people when things aren’t going well or congratulations when things are going great.

And the Twitter news beats real news hands down. From bushfires to earthquakes to oil spills and celebrity deaths, I’ve heard about it all on twitter first. And not to mention the engagement and birth announced by (separate) twitter friends in the past few weeks.

Twitter is one web 2.0 tool that will be with me for a long time to come.

Trying Out Twitter

by

Because I was going to Web Directions last week, I decided that I should give twitter a go as I had heard that it was a good tool for keeping up with happenings at conferences.

Well it was good for the first day then on the second day I was running out of battery on my phone so tried to turn off the notifications to the phone and ended up deleting the whole mobile service (I sent STOP rather than OFF), so the second day was a bit of a write off due to my technical blunder.

But then there was WebJam – and my twitter  was back up and running and working well, which was good because the twitter feeds at WebJam were cool and really added to the evening.

So my thoughts on the first few days of using twitter:

  • I still feel like twitter is for the cool kids only, and I’m definitely not one of those, so I feel like a bit of a fraud on it.
  • I’m enjoying it today, being a quiet day looking up web things, I feel a bit more connected to the rest of the world getting the twitter feeds.
  • I don’t have that many people following me yet, and I feel like a complete dork following someone who is not following me, but I suppose I just have to get over it.
  • Love the direct message feature, I didn’t know you could do that.
  • Love the simple interface
  • Love all the little apps you can use for accessing twitter
  • Really love terraminds to search on what’s been said

So if I keep using it for a while I think it will be positive, and hopefully a few more people will start following me… and maybe I can even go to one of the STUB functions as a real twitter user.