Natalie Hanson Taking the plunge
For a long while now, I’ve been meaning to get my act together with a web site and an online presence in general. But now understanding all the new technologies is integral to my work, so I’m deep into it trying to figure it out. I’m on Facebook now, and finding some long-lost friends from high school, and from former jobs. I’m Twittering (you can request to follow me here), and I’m even set up to tweet from my cell phone.
There are other areas where I’ve made less headway – and not for lack of trying in some cases! I’ve uploaded my Safari bookmarks to del.icio.us and am experiencing both the pain and the rewards of tagging and sharing bookmarks. I’m still trying to figure out why I should use Flickr instead of the .Mac capabilities, but I haven’t really delved too deep into that yet. I really love just browsing Flickr – so many beautiful things to look at.
Overall, I have more questions than answers at this point, both at a personal and professional level. At a personal level, the web site and the blog have been slower in coming because I’m really struggling with the boundaries of public & private. On my family blog, most of the posts tagged with ‘pregnancy’ are password-protected, for example. Without actually building things, it’s not always clear what the boundaries are between I want to share with which audiences. At a professional level, I am especially curious about what other anthropologists are working in this space, and about the applicability of these technologies in a corporate setting where managed content is king.
In any case, though, I’m enjoying the new learning, and the thinking too. I hope it may eventually help me get my anthropology hat back on at work! So stay tuned for more on this topic, under the ‘social media’ tag.
Natalie Hanson 