Thing 5: Reflective practice

I'm reflecting on where I've come from, what I decided to do, what has happened so far and how that was in relation to my expectations. I try to reflect each week on the topic but sometimes you need to take a longer look back.

I needed to get more experience in using social media. As well as library roles (electronic, repository, etc) I also do contract website work and many sites are now using social media to direct traffic towards the site.

What I decided to do

I started cpd23 as a means of pushing myself into places I wasn't going to go to without an incentive. I enjoy learning but wanted a means of focussing my learning.

Part of learning is linking new understanding to your prior knowledge. Trying out new tools probably means making mistakes and learning from them.

What have I done and what do I now do differently?

Started this blog

I realised straight away that I don't like publishing my inner thoughts and revealing my identity. Especially when I'm job-hunting as they will probably Google me. On reflection, my future employer does need to be able to work with me so if I keep it fairly professional it will only put off someone that I probably wouldn't have got on with anyway. Hope so!

Looked at other blogs

Some others are much more open than me and have such good ideas and write in an interesting way. How can I make mine more interesting?

Branding

I learnt that my top Google result is a very old family history related post. Not what I really want. I'd rather have more recent ones at the top, but don't want to load my list posts with keywords that will be 'popular' at the expense of giving useful contributions. I do need to do something about this although I'm not keen on promoting myself. I prefer promoting my family history society or a library service.

I did decide to be more open about my identity and got my picture up. I'll be at the London cpd23 meet, but am not aware of who I might meet there.

Twitter, Pushnote

I was already using RSS and it is still my favourite. I'm now following others through Twitter and can see that it is useful to me. I joined an SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) one and immediately got other followers (trying to boost their own rankings?).

In conclusion

I'm getting practical experience of other ways of connecting with people. These could be applied to information services. I need to carry on considering my branding and try embedding Twitter into daily use like I already use RSS.

I also need to become faster at doing CDP23 exercises. Perhaps shorter blog posts!