Jennifr

Smartmob Leicester.

As AJCann wrote about earlier - we used to Seesmic to arrange a “smartmob” (or “coffee” for those who are not convinced by social media terminology) to discuss what was proposed yesterday. In the past - from holding various moderator roles and reveling in teen angst as a Livejournal “early adopter” - I would say “Nice to put a face to the nick” - but in this case, when you are twittering and tweeting at each other everyday - and in the last week we’ve been throwing caution to the wind with the old seesmic - it was very much a case of adding a 5th dimension to the things we’ve been doing already as part of the evangelistic cult of social media in Leicester. (Exactly one of the reasons why I decided to move to Leicester on a whim, and not do the MA long distance from Ayr - as I had originally planned this time last year… )

From the perspective of my research, I believe that taking things offline with people you’ve been having like-minded conversations with is something that is underlying from the beginning. Locality is probably the buzz word and combined with my internal (and insane) beliefs that we bring down traditional hierarchy (or at least offer an alternative to things like the MEDIA ZOO for people the power-that-be to fund*) It’s good - I’ve opened a can of worms that would have been probably opened by somebody else soon anyway - as in the last 24 hours I’ve (we’ve - as in anybody who stumbles upon this or anything related to social media in Leicester) to attend the Creative Coffee Club - and also been listed a number of events in London - that I will probably take a gander at because I want to network a bit further as well.

It’s good for me - as a graduate student - I’m not isolated one bit - and it builds my confidence in my own proposal for next year, after having been knocked down by several people who I would personally disagree with - regardless of their status at the university. Furthermore, it has put me in touch with people who have a lot more experience than myself but offer the ability to collaborate with at my own level. Plus, my feedback should help those who are interested in how they can utalise this for students on a bigger scale. Combined with the fact that my two supervisors are incredibly supportive of what I’m doing and are happy for me to carry on doing and using social technology to aid my own learning and filter it down to my peers (not only my classmates - who, bar Niki, don’t use anything(!) but also the people I work with and meet from working in the pub - most of them are UoL students, who find me from searching for “The Dry Dock” in employment information on FB) I’ve got people stopping in the library, asking me how to blog and why they aren’t getting comments for the things they write.

Finally, the fact I’m starting my dissertation work this week (and will have to spend 2 weeks immersed in the art of virtual ethnography methods - I’m going to end up talking to a lot of University of Leicester students both online and offline for my MA thesis. I don’t know how many I should be talking to at the moment but the pure fact that I know I can get some many in such an accessible and interesting way is making the process of the dissertation intriguing and useful, rather than something that I should be scared off.

Anyway, if anyone who is following on seesmic has noticed - I have completely lost my voice, killed a bunch of braincells and I’m burning the candle severely at both ends. I suppose I should chillax and stop my brain thinking about these things for at least 6-7 hours.

*I need to get over the preposterous comments I got for my ERSC proposal feedback from people who refuse to acknowledge the grumble of technology that is heaving from the library/open access computer labs/student’s laptops as they all log into social media sites such as facebook to talk about their work and instead decide to tell me to go away and think about the fact that what I’m doing is perhaps a “silly fad” - yeah, whatever grandpa… no sorry, even my 82 year old grandpa has a mac and is using it to connect to other like-minded grandpas who like to use computers to send clipart at each other.