Have a Break

In my earlier post “Let Blogs Speak For Themselves” I touched on the topic of a need for constantly changing vocabulary, especially tech terms. As a kind of follow up to the subject I decided to have a look for some of the more humorous “definitions” during lunch today and found a couple worth the mention.

High Tech Humour - This one discusses the intricacies of  writing technical documents for your boss. A few simple techniques go a long way.

Tech One Liners - “Daddy, what does ‘FORMATTING DRIVE C’ mean?”

More  over the coming lunches….

Life is Tweet

I’d like to quickly look at Twitter.com, source of the craze that has recently struck mainstream internet users.  Known as micro blogging, Twitter allows it’s users to post brief (140 character) statements and receive feedback,  allowing the conversation to be extended towards a wide audience.  Sounds great to some and fairly standard to others but how can Twitter really have an effect on both personal and professional lives?

Businesses that are looking for an Enterprise 2.0 edge are eager to be a part of Twitter. The results are immediate, it is cheap and the feedback is genuine. The fact of the matter is that any new line of communication with customers is beneficial to a business. Tweeting enables direct communication to and from the consumer which brings a plethora of requests, complaints, suggestions and questions that help develop rapore and enhance the brand. However, the indirect discussion is often where the real benefits lay. When a company can get unbiased and unregulated opinions and discussion on how well they are providing a product or service, they can not only improve themselves before a threat escalates, but capitalise on the potential for innovation at no cost of their own. An example of this is the use of Twitter coupons whereby simply using Twitter, a company adds benefit to their product or service and also promotes their brand all in the space of a tweet.

Twitter began as an experiment in 2006 and due to exponential growth over the next eighteen months Twitter Inc opened officially in 2007. Though, before it became a leading marketing and intelligence tool, Twitter was just people. Individuals use Twitter both socially and professionally to many rewards. The idea of having a personal web identity and presence goes further than providing an online CV.  It is used as a constant reminder of who you want to be by focusing on how you appear online. It provides a way to reframe reality by feeding off the positive attitudes others display in their own posts. The site provides a sense of accomplishment and the feeling of providing a positive impact on the lives of others.

Although an effective tool in many respects there are some contextual limitations to the benefits of Twitter. For example, the limited character count means that posts are only useful for providing updates and comments. This means that for a business that would like to convey any amount of detail, there will be a lot of linking and redirecting to the “genuine article”. As for individuals, micro blogging is much quicker, but there is not as much room to review and backtrack. A traveller may not find it to be as useful as a regular blog.

In a future post (later this week) I would like to investigate some cases of how some businesses have used Twitter to improve their performance and more specificly, what methods they are employing to achieve this.

Let blogs speak for themselves

On an enterprise level, blogging is held in high regard as a tool of rapid innovation , allowing experts to communicate and brainstorm with unprecedented efficiency. The wisdom of crowds is being utilised to allow large organisations and individuals alike, the opportunity create better products and maintain healthy competition. But to the broader public, it seems this breakthrough in social communication appears as nothing more than a public diary. Let’s start, I say, by breaking down this wall.

How can we do this? Well it helps if we’re all speaking the same language.

In Margaret Simons’ commentary “Towards a taxonomy of blogs”, the award winning journalist discusses desire for our vocabulary to grow, enabling more accurate critique.

“I think the need for new vocabulary is becoming urgent…. The question was asked ‘Is blogging one of the hopes of the future?’

As speakers variously scoffed at the idea or spoke hopefully, it dawned on me that we were not necessarily talking about the same phenomena. Some blogs offer hope for a new kind of journalism. Some don’t, because they are doing a different kind of thing; things which may in themselves be valuable.”

From “The Diary” blog, to “The News” blog, to “The Pamphleteering” blog, I agree that for the system to function better there is need for well defined terms. In turn, this will hopefully lead to specialist functionality improvements; the creation of new environments, totally dependent on the context. Come to think of it, isn’t that exactly what Myspace and Twitter are already doing for the social context?

It won’t matter how quickly the new vocabulary moves and mutates as long as the term clearly describes the entity.

I don’t want to dwell for too long on the subject, however, it would be interesting to see what tech terms are floating about that you or a colleague are believed to have coined and feel strongly for.

Welcome to my blog!

WELL, this could be the start of something interesting couldn’t it.

Hi, everybody! My name is Paul Davis and this is my first ever blog post.

Having never written a blog (or even kept a journal before) please forgive me if my early posts begin to wonder a little off point.
So, I feel that this would be a good time to introduce myself and give you a feel of what makes me tick. Also, I’d like to quickly skim over why this blog exists and what I hope to get out of it.

Let’s keep it brief though for your sake.

To sum myself up in three words…. would be a stupid idea I think because no one can be that uninteresting. Lists can help though.

• I’m 20 years old and a full time I.T student at QUT, Australia.
• If I were to list my best friends, my computer would be high in the list
• I like to think of myself as the creative type
• I love music and skateboarding (and have the medical history to prove it)
• My favourite time of the day is 5AM although I rarely have the pleasure of seeing it.

Gettin’ the idea? You will.

This blog was actually not my idea. It started as part of a course I’m taking this semester (take a bow Enterprise 2.0).

At first I was skeptical; What do I have to say that hasn’t been said yet?

I was laying in bed, listening to Bob Dylan no less, when I began to understand. It’s not about writing FOR other people, but TO them. The real interest in blogs should come self expression, not just typing up what the general public want to read. Blogs should be linguistically colourful and well thought through. From my blog I don’t just want input, output and feedback; I want ideas, culture and realisation.

In the future it would be great to be able to look back and feel like I’ve made an impact on my own ideals and values.

The way I see it; experience is secondary and not at all necessary to do something well.

Gates didn’t graduate from university… Jagger and Richards had no musical training…and I’m sure Socrates didn’t do a Masters of Philosophy.

IDEAS, CULTURE and REALISATION

That’s my two cents for the morning, but if anyone wants me to expand on anything or just to point out how bad it was for a “test post”, feel free!

A big “Hello!” to Jason Watson and my Enterprise 2.0 class.

Cheers