What are you doing?

Twitter says “What are you doing?” ….. Singing its praises.

Like a lot of relationships mine with Twitter has been a bit on and off over the past 9 months or so.

I was going to ponder on an elaborate post – but that’s not what the New Web is all about – blogging is about capturing the moment (as Hubmum showed last night) and conveying instant thoughts in micro-blogs … in less than 140 characters if you use Twitter. (Side note – see English 140).

(Twitter by Commoncraft – if you want a simple no nonsense video of what it is all about).

I’m “on” with Twitter now for a number of reasons

• There a network of like minded people I am sharing 140-character-bite-size chunks of information with.
• You can “track” what others are saying about a topic
• The Hashtag enables a group of people at event or going to an event to use its power to draw themselves to each other.
• It’s fun – following the twists and turns of The Apprentice with other Twitterers last night was just such – well I thought so anyway.
• You get to meet read the blogs of a wider range of interesting and inspiring people – recently for me like Emma and Jeremy.
• Its about sharing stuff, telling people “its gone cloudy, but was sunny this morning”.
• Its about collaborating “I’ve got an X, you’ve got a Y,can we together build a great XY?”

Beth Kanter asked a question on Twitter last night that made me think. “What was your Twitter Ah Ha moment when it proved its worth?” (Beth – can you reply with the results of this Twitterpoll please?)

So I am sat here thinking….

“Yes, it was a desperate plea a few weeks ago for help to a technical / logistical problem for which I needed a quick answer. Twitter followers answered – I said thanks”.

How true, but actually as I type my Twitter moment has just happened (again!).

Its that Twitter is just so amazingly flexible, adaptable and mouldable to your life. I have a light-bulb over my head just re-reading bits of Paul Caplans blog about sending Hashtags from your phone to yourself with to do lists and URLs you’ve spotted than then pop up in your RSS feed when back at a PC. How cool really great is that !

Twitter is only limited by the creativity of those gifted to “mash-it-up” with other applications and our thoughts on how these apply to us.

I don’t “know” a lot of my Twitter followers, but because I know they are in similar situations to me and we are all working to solve similar problems there is a kind of bond there.

 

Twitter says “What are you doing?” … Being controversial.

I will end with this news item from Charity Finance

Some of the problems may be with the Charity Commissions internal ICT capabilities or with the procedures they are asking organisations to go through, but you also do have to ask why are some small Charities and Voluntary Organisations having problems with their use of ICT to submit their returns

Is the difficulty at their end?

If it is, could it be because they don’t have the equipment / skills / infrastructure / support / Internet bandwidth (circle as appropriate) to make the submissions.

What is needed is a co-ordinated national programme of ICT infrastructure development with nationally developed guides, websites (Knowledgebase) and resources applicable for use by small front line VCOs and cascaded out regionally and sub-regionally so each of these VCOs knows of a trusted local point of contact they can call on for support and help …..

….. that’ll be the ICT Hub then.