Hi Pam, I don't hate technology, but I also don't have a craving fascination for it.
Social media, of course, is a different arena. I love the idea of connecting to people and exhanging ideas and thoughts--and as you would say, rubbing minds with those who would like to share their wisdom with me on a range of topics of interest to me.
But here too, I am not a person who plunges headlong into anything new unless I am truly convinced that I need it for 'building bridges' with the community around the world. I take my time to explore, play and understand the technology and its bigger impact.
Facebook (FB) was the platform that I began to use since last year. I liked the idea of being able to instantly share interesting stories, thoughts, links, audios and videos to friends and acquaintances. Of course, I kept believing that the catch here was that my friends had to be online to be able to read the stuff that I had put up. To my pleasant surprise, I found out that many of them had mobile internet connectivity which allowed them instant access and reaction time to the latest posts on FB.
And then I was introduced to Twitter by a friend of mine. I did not cosy up to it for some months. Then one day, some time late last year, I decided to take a peek. And in the months that followed, I never went beyond that occasional peek (read: a few announcements about my blog posts).
Yesterday was the first day when I ventured into that domain thanks to an extremely educative session of Twitter lessons with Andy. The session, which lasted for more than an hour, gave me a fair bit of idea of hows and whys about Twitter.
Of course, I must admit that I need to get more up, close and personal with Twitter to feel comfortable about it. But this was an excellent start to get familiar with it.
It was interesting to hear from Andy what it means to follow other users, get followed by others and the ways to retweet tweets.
For those using low bandwidth net connections (or mobile net connectivity), Andy suggested a damn good platform to access Twitter: http://dabr.co.uk/ This has an extremely easy user interface and makes tweeting a pleasure.
I will write more about my Twitter user experience as I plug and play the various features. Alongside, I hope to understand how to use it better as an effective development communication tool through Dadamac's Twitter group.
Thanks Andy and Thanks Pam.
Vijay