As I ponder in improving my website, (it’s something I’m not happy with at the moment), I’ve been thinking about how I should approach it.
Perhaps personal site phases have progressed something like:
- Static site - Hey, look at me…isn’t this cool, I’ve got a (literally) flashy Geocities website.
- Blogs - I’ve got something to say, get updates, come, read and contribute.
- Social Networks - I don’t really want to write anything, but do want to participate, network, be social and make connections. My basic site shows you where I hang out.
- Micro blogging - ie. Twitter. A mini blog with social features. I can say really small things that make a difference.
- The personal network…?
Of course, these can all be mashed up and interconnected. You might, for example, have a site that pulls rss feeds in from everywhere you ‘hang’ out.
Wordpress or Ning?
From experience of using Wordpress (e.g. Project Brighton) and Ning (e.g. Software Testing Club / Werkshop) I’m kind of torn between the two.
Ning
Apart from the flexibility, I love Ning for the community aspect. If you want it enough you can build your own little community. It doesn’t need to be big to be a success, often a small group is all it takes. Interaction, participation, collaboration, meeting up in real life…
It’s also really good at keeping anonymous people out, this could be spammers, or people who generally don’t add value to the community.
I don’t like Ning for their ads (which can be removed at a cost) and what appears to be their lack of ability to import my blog history (e.g. my blog posts from Typepad). Am sure the importing/export issue will get addressed…in time. They have actually been pretty good at improving their ‘app’.
Wordpress
Is just cool. Free ‘n’ easy to use, implement and modify. Widgets come in all shapes and sizes to ensure we can pimp up our comfy li’l place. Great for blogging and pulling in information/feeds from other networks.
Ideal for the fanatical or occasional blogger, but when I’m looking for more than just a means to blog, well it’s missing that social aspect. Yes, people can comment, but frankly that isn’t enough for me.
Big ego?
If I were to set up my main site (www.rosiesherry.com) as a Ning site, would it be seen as egotistical? How would people feel about joining a network based around ‘me, me, me’? A network based on what I am interested in. Interests which may change from day to day, month to month, year to year.
Does it sound selfish?
I think it does.
Does it really matter?
I got tagged exactly a month ago by Rowan. It’s taken a while, but here goes…
- I once met Mother Teresa, in Czech whilst in flight transfer, I was young - about 10 or so.
- I’m half Irish, half Colombian, born in London, married to a Scotsman, living in Brighton person.
- Don’t have much when it comes to educational certifications. Partly because of travel (that’s my excuse), but generally alot to do with schools & colleges being really crap.
- My second son was born after a one hour labour.
- You won’t ever catch me wearing a dress or skirt.
- I moved back to England (from Colombia) first chance I got, aged 18 on me own.
- I recently discovered that one of my teachers (when I was 11ish in Jakarta, Indonesia) discovered his bit of Nutter fame.
- I’m 29, have two kids, been married for almost 5 years and spent less than £500 getting married.
I’m supposed to choose other people to tag, but am going to cheat by saying: if you’re reading this YOU are tagged.
Please leave a comment if you do decide to accept the mission.
So I keep getting told that “I am everywhere” and that it “seems like I help organise everything that goes on digitally in Brighton”. So whilst that is obviously not true, I thought I would keep up with being a part of everything by joining up as a partner/co-director with the lovely James McCarthy and Ian Elwick for Werkshop (where The Werks is a “Werkshop Project”).
I’m sorry if you’ve had enough of me, but it doesn’t seem like you’ll be getting rid of me any time soon 
Werkshop / The Werks is really a natural progression from all the community stuff I’ve been doing. Coworking, community and collaboration kind of things are right up my street and am *really* excited about the future….
Keep an eye on The Werks for lots of stuff coming up.
With all this social, collaboration and community focused stuff going on it’s easy to wonder why people contribute their precious time without any upfront cost.
I mean:
- Why do something for free when you could be making money - or spending it on something you don’t really need.
- Why would you want to contribute to your (local) community when you don’t have to?
- It’s easier to moan (as us Brits do) about stuff rather than getting up off your arse and do something about it.
- It’s someone elses job to do *that*…
- etc….
I believe:
- If you want something to change - you need to do something about it.
- It’s not about self promotion, but it’s ok and possible for people to be selfish act in their own interest and beliefs. Afterall, it is this what drives people and makes them passionate to make a difference. Time is precious, why would we spend our spare time on something we didn’t care about?
- In leading a life of action over consumption.
- Communities have been neglected and people are beginning to miss being part of one (even if they never have).
I’m like sooooo into all this community building stuff. It’s just so easy for me to lose myself in it.
What communities am I building?
I’m not quite sure whether Project Brighton is or will be classed as a community - it’s more bringing existing communities together. However, it is evolving in ways that I didn’t originally plan - this is why I don’t focus too much on the planning these kind of things!
In a very short (and not trying to analyse things too much), here are some comments on my experiences.
Brighton Girl Geeks
- Girl Geeks has been very successful - I’m still trying to figure out why. Can you tell me?
- The most rewarding thing for me is seeing something grow from nothing.
- I love the human contact of the community, using technology to bring people together socially offline is great (fun).
- It’s scary.
- It’s hard work.
- It’s rewarding, mostly reputation and socially wise.
- It’s the best confidence booster I’ve ever had.
- It’s fun.
- Whilst I’m happy for other people to be involved, I believe if I don’t keep it going, no one will. Does someone want to take on the challenge?
- I get to meet cool people.
- Blog, wiki, Upcoming, LinkedIn and Ning have been the mail tools for promotion.
- Am always playing with new ideas, such as the lunches and coffees.
- Am eternally grateful to the girl geek organisers and sponsors…wouldn’t have been the same without their support.
Software Testing Club
- Gotta love Ning. So easy to set up an online community.
- It requires maintenance, building and creativity. Most people expect communities to suddenly grow just because there is an online space to communicate. The easy part is setting up, the hard is to keep it going as something useful.
- LinkedIn has been great to help it grow recently. I created a Software Testing Club LinkedIn group that recently started to grow fairly rapidly (mostly down to people seeing their contacts join through status updates). People are like sheep sometimes.
- Aggregating and publishing RSS is a great way to keep fresh content and have the content owners come and join the group.
- Don’t think the club would have worked if I didn’t have a blog with a respectable and testing focused readership.
- Have just started to monetize it, not much, but it’s a start.
- I do my best to give everything a human touch.
- Am trying to create localised groups to make it easier for people to meetup face to face or just find local help. The internet has made it too easy for people to forget about their neighbours.
- Sometimes I see things that I’m not entirely happy with, though am not entirely sure how to deal with it.
A friend of a friend was the witness of some nasty bullying of an elderly woman at a NHS Ipswich Hospital.
Appalled at what was seen she wants to do something about it.
Read the story, pass it on and link to it like mad.
This is my space. My blog. My little world to write about what is important…to me.
It use to talk about Software Testing…my day job though increasingly not so much my day job. I moved my previous blog under the banner of DrivenQA - mainly to separate my professional stuff from the less formal.
It appears to have become a dumping ground for videos and the very occasional semi thought out blog post. Twitter hasn’t helped my blogging efforts either. I find the need to blog has significantly reduced as Twitter is kind of like my ‘quick fix’.
Things are changing though, hopefully for the better, and not all completely geeky either
A few months back my lovely husband bought me a camera. It took me a while to realise that it takes decent videos.
I’ve been going a bit crazy and experimenting with it all. If you are interested in random mini bits of my life you can follow the videos on my Tumblr account - http://rosiesherry.tumblr.com/
