ALT-C 2010 Have I remembered everything…?

This week is particularly busy for me, with two conferences back to back, ALT-C then PHEC.

I’d hoped to be included in a workshop at my first ALT-C but it wasn’t to be, still I went along. Crowdvine, which I’d never encountered before, was particularly useful when attending a large conference for the first time and without colleagues. It gave me an idea of who would be there and the topics that were uppermost in peoples’ minds, so when I arrived at the conference itself I hit the ground running.

It also got me using Twitter, which at that time was little known and still finding its feet. I don’t know if any of us knew then what we were going to do with it but I’m glad I persisted.

This will be my third ALT-C and my first time with a presentation which makes it particularly special. Crowdvine has again be very useful for pre- conference planning and I aim to be using Twitter in my usual ‘meeting’ mode (a cross between note taking and broadcasting.)

If you have an interest in open educational resources, whatever your discipline (or none),  do stop by poster 0225, flag me down during the conference or leave me a comment on Crowdvine.

I <3…

I’ve just enjoyed watching Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ TED talk on Bing’s augmented-reality maps, the kind of application it’s hard not to be very impressed by and access to could mean I get no useful work done ever again. I was particularly impressed by the way it brought together related data from different sources in a way that didn’t leave you feeling overwhelmed with information. (It also made me want to visit Seattle again.)

A reply to my message on Twitter from @deburca pointed to his blog post on Pivot, which looks similarly impressive in its way of enabling you to take large amount of data and make sense of it all.

Seeing the talk on Bing reminded me of the last highly impactive technology TED talk I saw on SixthSense, and I’m convinced that we could have all this if you could just create the semantic web for me. Please? You’re such a clever bunch, I know you can do it. I’d be very grateful and wouldn’t ask for anything else ever again.

The Moral Malaise

Oh dear. What a waste of an opportunity to explore the use of microblogging on yesterday’s episode of the Moral Maze. Instead we seemed to be offered only a debate built on the flimsy foundation of the now familiar stereotypical image of Twitter.  If you missed it and want to hear the episode it is available for the next week though sadly I will warn you, you will probably not be challenged and will likely learn nothing.

The usual criticisms were made about the impossibility of depth or reflection given the character limit of the message, these observations made by… non-users. Well you can’t knock the programme for being elitist when it comes to qualifying to speak or present. And how much easier it is to see when your view is unclouded by actual experience, I do look forward to my invitation to debate the pros and cons of keyhole surgery or in fact anything else I haven’t done. 

Herd mentality, mob rule… yes, worthy topics of discussion but are they special and distinctive of microbloggers? Hardly, so why was this this focus of discussion?

I’ve lost count of the number of positive experiences I’ve gained through the use of web 2.0 tools, it’s what keeps me using them, but part of that experience has stemmed from my approach: Twitter, like life, is what you make it.

If you don’t want to Twitter (or anything else) my advice is: ‘don’t’. But you didn’t need that advice did you, or to be reminded that what you don’t find useful some others might. I’ll be sure to remind the panel of this when I’m invited along to wax lyrical on dry stone walling and its role in the breakdown of family life next week.