Thing 23? I'm not stopping here!

A week ago, when the end was in sight, but not quite in reach, I thought I'd be writing this post with relief.

Instead, what I am finding is a remarkable sense of pride at the Things I have accomplished. In just a few months I have learnt so much about what Web2.0 has to offer and how I can use it, and share it, and enhance our services with it. I am in awe of those who put together this programme for us in Cambridge - the enthusiasm and drive behind it is inspirational, and really serves to demonstrate just what we can do with a can-do attitude!

The fabulous Cam23 Team. As Wayne and Garth would say: We're not worthy!

It's been an interesting "12" weeks (okay, 16 then) - I came to it with a skeptical attitude, but with the willingness to learn and explore - to at least have a go without dismissing anything outright. There's still so much I have to discover, and experiment with, but I don't feel so completely overwhelmed by it all as I did even ten Things ago. There have been Things I've really struggled with (like podcasting and image use), but there's always been help at hand, and somehow or other I finally got there in the end!

I think the course itself was excellent. While I don't think there was an issue of too little time to achieve everything, I think perhaps a course like this would be better rolled out earlier within the academic year. What with exams, and end-of-year returning of books, then stock-takes and summer holidays, this time of year can be frenetic! (It didn't help that in our library, the entire staff was knocked out at some point over the last two weeks with illness.) If the course were to be repeated, I think it would work better starting in November or March. However, Web2.0 is the sort of thing you want to know about as soon as possible, so I'm glad I did it now rather than wait for a more convenient time!

On the whole, I found the instructions each week to cover pretty much everything I needed to know. The only real exception was the podcasting, and that was probably more due to my preferred learning style and my antipathy of all things Apple than any deficiency in the instructions themselves. I found most of the further reading interesting (though I have to own up and say I did only skim-read the Shirky article).

Since completing each Thing there have been Things I have stuck with, and Things I intend to try when I come to a point where I'll find them useful, and Things that I think I'll probably not return to. I have been logging in with greater and greater frequency to my iGoogle page (which I think I now have pretty much exactly how I like it), which automatically checks Twitter and Google Reader. I hadn't seen the attraction of Twitter at all before I started (despite being fond of updating my Facebook status quite regularly) but now I'm beginning to see the allure of a feed with no cruft on. And it was thanks to Google Reader that I got to go and see the utterly gorgeous Rhod Gilbert, courtesy of BBC's free tickets RSS, so I'm completely sold on that now!

I think I can cross a few of these off now...only a few hundred left to try!

Things like Zotero, Delicious and Slideshare I haven't yet really used beyond initial exploration, but before the 23 Things I didn't even know they existed, so for now it's just reassuring to know they're there when I need them. I do intend to try out Zotero when it comes to working on my next assignment, so we'll see how it goes then. However, despite having never heard of the Creative Commons aspect of imaging, I'm now sourcing images for every post, both through Flickr and elsewhere, so that Thing definitely counts as a success! Meanwhile, LinkedIn didn't really do anything for me, and I think if I were going to use Facebook for work, I'd set up another account for the "professional" me, rather than use the one I have.

Finally, I think I might just continue blogging (she says, before the next update comes three years hence). It's been a good record of what I've tried out, and I intend to keep learning about Web2.0, so hopefully I'll still feel a need to keep the record. I also could incorporate it as a study diary for my degree, as there's going to be some overlap. A few modules from now I will be looking at marketing of library services for one of my assignments, and Thing 19 will come in very handy for that!

One thing I have appreciated since doing the 23 Things is that there is almost a dichotomy between the spirit of social media ("just do it!"), and the way libraries have approached it. Social media is easy to use, and often free (as in beer and speech, and frequently as in kittens). That means that you can "just do it", but there are limitless examples of social media poorly utilised on the web. The good Web2.0 libraries have recognised this: that the strategy is key. There's absolutely no point saying "everyone's using Twitter (or YouTube, or Delicious), so we should be too," and then creating a presence simply for the sake of being there. The interaction between content-producers and their readers (or listeners, or viewers) is what makes Web2.0 so vital and dynamic. This should be why you're using these tools - to engage with others, to collaborate, to find shared meaning in an increasingly chaotic world, to create multi-directional channels of information - or just to share with the world what you had for to eat that morning...