TG@CF – Page 2 – Thought grazing

Just a dash of coffee

I’ve been busy just recently, so apologies for the late notice of a confirmed date for our next #tgsmc meet-up …

Wednesday 31st October from 10:00am at Costa Coffee, Park Place

… what will we talk about? That’s up to you, but I’ll be interested in hearing people’s views on new Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google products and how they may be used in research, and learning and teaching. Then there’s digidol – the JISC digital literacy project the University is running and of course it’s Social Media Strategy – where does that stand at the moment?

I’d also be interested in views on where twitter is heading; has it now become just a marketing and PR tool and lost its value. Or, is it re-inventing itself with new uses and users. Then again, should we be defining an essential toolset for academic use, or do VLE / VRE still have a place.

Then we all follow certain colleagues who we feel we can learn something from – it might be worthwhile exchanging that information. For me, I’ve been struck recently by Martin Hamilton’s blogpost Suddenly, Everything has changed – it brings many themes together in one place rather well and is worth a read; and then again Steve Wheeler’s excellent summary of where we are with Theories for the digital age: the Digital Natives discourse is also certainly worth a read. Have you got a similar hot blogpost?

Finally, to avoid getting caught out as I did recently when I didn’t know the difference bewteen Green and Gold Open Access and found my knowledge of OA rather lacking – take a peak at the PhD TV video on Open Access; what was happening in Cardiff last week for Open Access Week?

So … old-hands, or newbies, we’ll look forward to seeing you and of course there’s always the coffee …

Polling for an Autumn date

With all the excitement of the university’s social media strategy; the impressive roll-out of Connections and of course all the usual suspects making announcements – not to forget Digidol of course – it must be time to have another meet-up and a cup of coffee.

I’m posting here a Doodle link – experimenting with something different from Meet-o-matic – please use it so that we can see if we can find a date in November for a chat in the Costa Coffee, Park Place, Cardiff.

Look forward to seeing you! Oldies and newbies alike. Stay as long, or as short, a time as you like.

This is why I just love Google+

Just the other day I re-shared a post from Tim O’Reilly. The post itself has (to date) had 283 comments and been +1’d 1482 times and been re-shared 728 times. If, like me, the person re-sharing the post has made a comment which indicates their slant on the original post that means the ecosystem of engagement and the range of views expressed is immense – I’m not skilled enough to garner those posts and analyse them but I do know they’re all recorded in one place, so you could search them out.

What I do know is that this level of engagement and the depth of comment that can be engendered on Google+ would not have happened on twitter – where the best one might have hoped to have achieved would have been a reference to a blog post you’d written with the comments (if any) stored on a myriad of blogs all over the place; and would not have happened at all on Facebook – where I’ve never observed any serious commentary occurring.

There’s really quality engagement and conversation taking place on Google+. I commend it to you!

Bubbling over with social media excitement

Hopefully meet-o-matic has chosen a date and time from the responses I received that will be widely available. A break with tradition and time – an end of day cuppa!

Come to Costa Coffee in Park Place for 16:00pm on Tuesday 10th July for the end of term Thought grazing social media cafe #tgsmc.

Why not share what you’d particularly like to have a chat about in a Comment. I’ll post it up as soon as I can.

Polling for a July date

With all the excitement of the university’s social media strategy; the impressive roll-out of Connections and of course recent announcements from Apple, Microsoft and Google – not to forget Digidol of course – it must be time to have another meet-up and a cup of coffee.

I’m posting here the meet-o-matic link, please use it so that we can see if we can find a date in the w/b 9th July for a chat in the Costa Coffee, Park Place, Cardiff.

Look forward to seeing you! Oldies and newbies alike. Stay as long, or as short, a time as you like.