Breaking the geek image
Last night I went to the second NFPtweetup, organised by Rachel Beer. There was informal chat, a more formal sharing of slides we had submitted, and then some directed discussions on what Twitter means to the voluntary sector.
What strikes me most about these sorts of events is how normal we all are. (Of course, I may not be the best judge of that.) We are not a clique of socially inept geeks: instead – as I’ve said elsewhere – we are enthusiastic individuals who use social media to support rather than replace our social and professional lives.
But it can be hard to break the geek image, or to convince people that there’s any professional value in social media (and particularly Twitter). Therefore, inspired by someone at last night’s event, I’m going to try gently introducing colleagues to the microblogging platform Yammer (which is like Twitter but for organisations).
So let’s see if I can help break the geek label once and for all; or failing that, to turn other people into geeks too.