Category: Communications

Intersection of @saTech and @saComm

BreakDrink
BreakDrink

I had the pleasure to serve as a guest co-host on the great BreakDrink Campus Tech podcast series this week. Thanks to Laura Pasquini for the invite. She and Bruce Mann are delightful hosts, and Eric Stoller jumped in to the conversation as well (with a very nice recap of @saTechBOS, which, as you have heard, I missed to do a delayed flight. I may blog on my bitterness later.)

An interesting side note: Don’t know if you can hear it or not on the podcast, but there is a lot of background noise coming in at the beginning from my end. My office is in a residence hall. I don’t work for our University Housing department; I just happen to have an office space that’s off the lobby of one of our many residence halls on campus. The Resident Advisors had just moved in the weekend prior. Just as the live broadcast started, a whole gang of RAs congregated in the lobby and were fairly loud. I loved it! I’m one of those Student Affairs professionals who doesn’t usually work directly with our students (anymore); I work behind the scenes to make sure our in-the-trenches folks have the technology they need to be successful. But the location of my office is always a treat this time of year as the staff returns to start training and prepare for the onslaught of the students and the fall semester. As a former RA and hall director, it brings back fabulous memories. As I think about it, most folks probably could not hear this over the loud clicking of Eric Stoller’s keyboard. :-)

I have no idea how many folks tuned in live, or have/will listen to the podcast. But it’s always fun to just blather on when others are required to listen. In this case, I did not feel that what I had to say was very coherent. Mostly because I just currently have some general thoughts on the topic of the intersection of technology and communications in the student affairs profession. I don’t have any conclusions — good, bad or indifferent — at this point. Just some observations that I think are worth noting. What follows is mostly a copy/paste of my notes in preparation for the program. Maybe some day it will start to gel and I’ll revisit the topic on this blog.

  • Relatively new interest in communications in the field of Student Affairs
  • Who is in charge of #sacomm in SA organizations?
    • Those who control the comm resources and comm technology (initially websites and print media, primarily, now social media) seem to control the message — and that’s the techies in many cases.
    • At the Division level there may be #sacomm staff or the #satechies
    • At the department level, usually not a a #sacomm specialist unless a LARGE organization on a large campus; typically a staff member who wears the comm hat
    • My campus — I lead the central, Division Technology unit that also has responsibility for #sacomm (though right now doesn’t translate into actual services for others except for consulting…mostly leadership and respresentation, and Division-level communications like our website)
  • #satechies and #sacomm
    • Why are we #satechies so involved with #sacomm? Is it because we love the technology? Because no one else is doing it? Because it’s a natural cross-over of interests and skill? All the above? (Would love to hear what audience thinks on this!)
    • #satechies seem to use social media at a much higher rate (anecdotal) than other student affairs staff. Again, is it because the technology is fun? We tend to be early adopters? (Would love to hear what audience thinks on this!)
    • Content of recent and upcoming conferences is amazing — HUGE focus on social media!
      • #unccause – UNC CAUSE (North Carolina’s versions of an EDUCAUSE conference) – Link #2 below – This is a techie conference but includes a whole track and closing keynote on social media.
      • #satechBos –
      • #NASPATech – 2 of the 6 topics are social media, and the “Audience & Format” description starts with: “Whether you have no idea how to create a Twitter account or you are an active blogger, this conference will deliver for you.”
      • 9820 hits when you search “social media” on the EDUCAUSE website!
    • With web work, there’s a move (at least on my campus) to hand over content management to the staff in departments and let professional techies handle the back-end. In other words, #satechies now have good tools (WordPress, Drupal, etc) to get out of the content business. Will the same thing happen with social media? Is that a good thing, or no?

How I Use Social Media

I started to draft this post on March 11, and it was original titled “Personal v. Professional Online Identities.” However, a couple of recent blog posts on a very similar topic prompted me to dig this out and finish with a different title. Jeff Lail, posted on how he uses social media and then a followup from Kevin Guidry on how he doesn’t use social media. And Tim Bounds is working on a post on this topic as well.

This might now be a meme…so tag, you’re it!

I have struggled to answer this question for myself and when asked by others: should one keep separate or blended online identities? I recently participated in a panel discussion on the topic of social media with Adam Covati of Argyle Social and Wayne Sutton, the developer of TriOut. This issue was posed to the panel for discussion, and both of my co-panelists described the difficulty in keeping these identities separate. Adam went on to discuss how you can try to keep them separate, but both worlds overlap and you are still that “blended” person.

I have colleagues who have social media accounts and it’s all out there in one identity; the trip to Dunkin’ Donuts, the badge won for drinking beer, the joys of parenthood…all that mixed in with the work stuff. What I discovered is that when I’m checking those accounts while at work, I enjoy hearing about the personal from those individuals I actually know, and can envision them at that place, eating that donut, drinking that beer, reading that book to their kid. It puts a smile on my face, or alerts me to a difficult situation that I can respond to.

But for those I don’t really know (meaning people I’ve never met in person, and really only co-follow on Twitter, for example) I find that I get annoyed with having to sort through the personal to find the professional. Hey, you got great things to say, but enough already with the need for a caffeine fix or religious views! Just give me the good stuff that I care about!

Then there are those who fall in between. I have some colleagues that I don’t know well, but have met in person, exchanged email, discussed professional ideas at some length. The personal information that is shared via social media gives me a glimpse of the other side of that individual that I don’t (yet) know. It’s a slice of life that sometimes reveals other ways in which I can connect with this person.

For me, I have finally decided that I want to keep these identities mostly separate. My cousin in California doesn’t really give a flip about some new article I read on QR codes, and I’m assuming that for the most part, most of you — my professional colleagues — don’t really care about my cousin in California. That’s really just me projecting my own values about social media on others, but there you have it. This decision to keep separate identities is reflected in my account name for most of these accounts: lesliedareNCSU.

I have a friend and colleague who was pleased to see me start tweeting more, but then complained it wasn’t the “real” me…he wanted to know “where’s all the good stuff that makes me laugh?” I pointed him to my personal Twitter account and hopefully I’m living up to his expectations now.

So here is how I use social media.

Facebook

  • Personal: I have just one account. I don’t post very often, but I do enjoy keeping up with friends and family who are geographically distant from me.
  • Professional:
    • I created my Facebook account in 2006 after my graduate assistant told me about it. I mostly wanted to see what it was all about. Then I got a message from Rey Junco wanting to connect, and suddenly I was thinking “How cool is THAT? Someone found me on Facebook and I’ve made this great work connection!”
    • As Facebook continued to intrigue our staff in Student Affairs at NC State, I decided to host a program about Facebook and it quickly became a campus-wide event and then morphed into a national event through our live webcast in January 2007. We used instant messaging (how old school is that!) to take questions from our virtual audience. Fred Stutzman was our local (yet nationally known) expert on the panel, along with other NC State faculty and staff. It was a great event, but seems so dated now, as you can imagine.
    • The first group I joined was the NASPA Nerds.
    • In the last 2-3 years, I haven’t used Facebook for professional purposes. I don’t post regarding my work, and even though I’m Facebook friends with many colleagues, I don’t find much professional information that isn’t already on Twitter, etc.
    • I help departments in our Division of Student Affairs with using Facebook. I use my one and only Facebook account to monitor, adminster groups, etc., but wish I had a separate personal account for this work.

Twitter

  • Personal: I have a personal account but don’t use it very much. I will occasionally tweet something that I think is too obnoxious, personal, or irrelevant for posting on my professional Twitter account.
  • Professional:
    • I’ve had a separate, professional Twitter account since August 15, 2007, but only sporadically tweeted until the last year.
    • I use this account, like Jeff, to “think out loud” and test ideas.
    • I ask for help, and often receive it, for both technical issues and strategic issues.
    • I research topics through the search and hashtag features.
    • I follow events through the backchannel.
    • Most importantly, my use of this account has allowed me to stay engaged in my work, in my profession, with my colleagues. The value of that can’t be overstated. It really is a key source of my on-going enthusiasm for what I do for a living.

LinkedIn

  • Personal: I have no separate, personal account.
  • Professional:
    • I’ve had a separate, professional LinkedIn account since May 12, 2008. I’m don’t recall why I created this account, or who pointed me it, but as in many cases I joined so I can understand the service.
    • I have never asked anyone to connect with me via LinkedIn, because I’m not looking for a job or needing to make those kinds of connections.
    • I sometimes will look up someone just to learn more about them or find contact information.
    • I’ve joined one discussion group, on social media, but it hasn’t been much use to me.

Delicious

  • Personal: I have a separate, personal account but don’t use it much.
  • Professional:
    • I’ve had a Delicious account since March 30, 2005. It originally contained both personal and professional bookmarks, but I separated the accounts in December 2010 with the creation of this blog. I wanted to share my professional bookmarks, but not the personal ones.
    • I research topics through shared bookmarks and tags.
    • I get a lot out of Delicious, but don’t use it as consistently as I should. Thanks to this blog post, I’ll be going to my Delicious account today!

Location Based Services

  • Personal: I sometimes shout out my location to my Facebook or personal Twitter feed, but not very frequently. I don’t have any reason to believe that anyone really cares where I am at the moment, other than maybe my mother. :-)
  • Professional:
    • I have been posting my location occasionally to my professional Twitter feed, but this is mostly to test a new location-based service that is launching at NC State very soon.
    • I anticipate using this service mostly to understand it well enough to consult with departments about how they can get the most of it, and to advise the group that is implementing this service.

I agree with both Jeff and Kevin. I like the notion that you can, and should, be yourself in your use of social media, and have fun. I’m also with Kevin; unless we are close colleagues or personal friends, I don’t care what you had for breakfast, and sometimes not even then! And I agree with his notion that while privacy may not be dead, we may be killing it. So I’m all about balance on that front. And I definitely hope to find opportunities for more in-person connections with those I’ve met and collaborated with through social media. After all, it’s all about building community, right?

Zuckerberg v. Gutenberg

The Zuckerberg Revolution by Neal Gabler in the LA Times

I’ve referenced Gutenberg’s Press (as topping Time Magazine’s “Events of the Millenium”) in guest lectures to Student Affairs grad students over the years, so this article really jumped out at me.

Here are some bits that caught my attention:

  • Zuckerberg’s social in-box “…may even challenge the very idea of serious ideas.”
  • “The more we text and Twitter and “friend,” abiding by the haiku-like demands of social networking, the less likely we are to have the habit of mind or the means of expressing ourselves in interesting and complex ways.”
  • In particular, the notion of the “haiku-like” nature of social media.
  • “That makes Zuckerberg the anti-Gutenberg. He has facilitated a typography in which complexity is all but impossible and meaninglessness reigns supreme. To the extent that ideas matter, we are no longer amusing ourselves to death. We are texting ourselves to death.”

I don’t believe that all social media is meaningless. I have experienced a tremendous sense of community through this form of communication, both personally and professionally.  I have seen great examples of writing about thorny issues on blogs (e.g, The Daily Dish , Ta-Nehisi Coats). However, I am compelled by the notion that maybe we are not as engaged in serious and complex thought, and that critical thinking may suffer. I, too, am tired of slogging through “Need some coffee!” tweets to get to the meat. But there is meat out there.

The real question for me is what exactly will be the lasting impact of social media? I’m not quite ready to sound the alarm bells of doom but it bears watching.