With music and cinema having played such an important role in my life I often slip a lyric or a line from a film script into a conversation. Following the Digital Footprints workshop as part of the Creative Partnerships programme at Haven Online in Boston last week, the seminal Moody Blues album came to mind. Very seventies maybe – but appropriate.
The session Dr. Abhay Adhikari presented was excellent. With new technology and vocabulary surfacing at an alarming rate it’s easy to be quickly left behind, especially when you have little or no knowledge of what it was that overtook and drove off into the distance………and how could digital networking benefit me exactly? I hadn’t the faintest idea. Abhay demystified the information and put all of us in the picture, suggested its relevance to us as individuals, how we might incorporate it into our working practise, how to get started and, most importantly, used language we could all understand.
If I had imagined social media, networking and blogging as a large building, on Monday I was locked outside but on Tuesday Abhay opened the door, welcomed us in and showed us around inside. Not only that, he gave us our own key. We drifted along corridors filled with doors and into a selection of the rooms. Later we were invited to explore this ‘building’ by ourselves. We opened more doors, and some of the rooms even had lights on! I no longer feel I’m on the outside staring up at Norman Bates’ motel. I’ve been invited in, and it feels okay. I don’t know how large the social media building is, or how many corridors and rooms there may be, but I’m willing to explore to see who else is in there.
Thank you Abhay. You were obviously the person I needed to explain this Brave New World. I’m indebted to you. The Kings of Leon couldn’t have said it better, ‘I’ve been roaming around, I was looking around at all I see/Painted faces fill the spaces I can’t reach/You know that I could use somebody……….Someone like you and all you know and how you speak……….Someone like you’
The concept and opportunity of social media is one thing, but considering the very busy life I lead, when on Earth would I find the time to add yet another activity to my already very full routine? This was when the Moody Blues came to mind. Marilyn Monroe said that in order to remember a new phone number, she had to forget an old one and I feel my small brain and lifestyle acts in a similar way – like a teapot. If I pour too much in the top, something will have to come out of the spout. I’m not advertising Tena for Men, simply pointing out that although times change what never changes is that there will only ever be 24 hours in a day. New technology continually slips into work and home routines, and if we feel it is appropriate, we adopt it naturally. We don’t have to force it in. I came to the conclusion that it’s not time to panic. It’s just A Question of Balance.
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