Soup Course: Things 8 & 9

Ehara taku toa, he taki tahi, he toa taki tini

It is not my strength alone, but the strength of many that contribute to my success

Kia ora koutou katoa,

The whakatauki for this week can be applied to both the Professional Profile and the Research profile ”Things 8 &9” in that we are hoping with both of these “things” to capture an audience, and through the power of  word of mouth have our professional and research profiles foremost in peoples minds. The work of the individual in this case is our profiles both professional and research shared to the world via our own contacts and Google Searches, the work of the many are our contacts or followers who can spread our research or put our names forwards if they know of positions they think match our skill and personalities.

I have had a LinkedIn account for a while and use it intermittently What I like about it is

• It is tailored to my professional goals and aspirations for work
• Is easy to use with good functionality
• Gives me a profile which looks professional and that showcases my job skills and experiences

I imagine watching an awesome presentation at conference, looking up that person on linkedin and keeping tabs of their professional profile until I hear of a position at my institution which is perfect for them and either share the job ad with that person or share their profile with my human resources or senior contacts within the institution

 I had never seen the Academia.edu site before and decided that I would join. It is very easy to use and I have already uploaded PDF copies of some of my conference workshops. It would also be great as a way of keeping copies of your research so that it is available to you anywhere in the world that you have access to the internet. I have yet to fully tutu or explore this site but so far I really like it.

Facebook I personally would not use for either professional or research profiles as I tend to use it as a means of communication with my whanau. Of course I still hold true to the belief about not saying/posting/writing anything that you wouldn't want your grandmother or mother to see regardless of the audience that you are speaking to.

Consommé: Things 6 & 7

Ka tangi te Tītī, ka tangi te Kākā ka tangi hoki ahau

The Mutton bird is calling, the Parrot is calling, and I wish to speak

Kia ora koutou katoa,

I chose the whakatauki for this post as I thought it appropriate at a number of levels. 
Twitter is "Thing 6" and I am sure you can see the the connection between twitter, tweeting and birds. I have had a twitter account now since September 2009, and  have probably used it more in the last month than for the rest of that year. A friend tried to tell me what hash tags were apologies to her as I never really got it. Then suddenly the lights went on when I started tweeting for this course and I now think of hash tags as an organisation tool, allowing me to easily find all the tweets about one topic that I am interested in like  #crazycats, #23research.

"Thing 7" is about your personal brand, and the link between the whakatauki and this "Thing" is a little less obvious. I think an important part of branding is communication, communication of who you are, what you do and what your interests (research or otherwise) are. The last part of the whakatauki is about a desire to speak (Communication). 

As part of "Thing 6" I tweeted about the Prezi presentation "You already have a brand" from the "Thing 7" module; what especially caught my attention in the presentation was the idea that we all have on an online presence regardless of how active/inactive we are.
Bearing this in mind with the communication aspect of our whakatauki I would rather be an active participant in how the virtual world sees me than inactive and allowing others and fate to dictate how I am perceived online.  I want any virtual representation of me to be as close to the "real" me as possible. It is impossible to control how people will perceive you virtual or otherwise, what you can control is the content that you put out into cyberspace, make sure that it all represents who you are and what you are about both professionally and personally.

I had already Googled myself  before however  now I look at the same results through a different lens and luckily I can say that I am pleased with the results when I see them as they are about my research for my MIS (Libs), conference presentations I have given, mentions of me in professional associations and to other social media sites I have profiles with. 

I didn't design the combined personal/professional profile that I have however I don't see a need to separate them as I know that they are different facets of the same person (also thankfully I have always followed the advice that you should NEVER say/write/post anything that you wouldn't want your grandmother to see or hear.

Still the Hors d'oeuvres

Ooops a bit more on "Thing 5" 

RefWorks

Endnote Web

For management of my readings and articles I used End-note (then RefWorks) because I not only had the references available to me for when I was writing but because you could save documents to the references. In the record of an article I would save a PDF version of it. 

I would also write notes about how I could use the references and attach those to the appropriate record as well. 

Hors d'oeuvres

Ko ia kāhore nei i rapu, tē kitea
"He who does not seek will not find"

Now on to "Thing 5", I was never really sure exactly what and how I would use RSS feeds. I have had a tutu with them using Outlook my work email which allow us to subscribe to RSS feeds, that seems a long time ago and I had not thought about news feeds until this thing. 

So far I think the trick, for me to use social media successfully for research is discipline. I like routine so if I start by allocating time directly after checking emails to blog writing and feed scanning after a short while it will become second nature. 

For management of news and  information I have a love of folders, although I haven't looked at the RSS feeds since I subscribed to them, I still have them organised in folders. I have also organised my bookmarks (in Explorer) into folders and as you can see below, some even have sub-folders (must be the librarian in me)

Before I finish with this "Thing" I wanted to share a page relevant for those who use Google Chrome browser and Feedly. I added the RSS Subscription extension (For Google Chrome browser) a suggestion at the bottom of "thing 5"  and found I had to add Feedly manually to the list of feed readers. Follow the link if you would like to use Feedly with RSS Subscription extension  from the Google Chrome browser. There is also the Feedly mini extension made for Google Chrome browser however I haven't bothered with this one as the instructions to add Feedly to the News reader were quite easy to follow.

Hors d'ouvre: Things number 4 and 5

Ko ia kāhore nei i rapu, tē kitea
"He who does not seek will not find"

I may have botched my blog up as I thought I would try and incorporate my love of food and eating by giving the blog posts course names, however there are only so many courses that are possible. A colleague suggested that you need something to differentiate your blog from the thousands of other blogs, to do this I thought I would like to start each post or group of "Things" with a whakatauki or māori proverb.

I chose the proverb above because I have searched this week for a blog to follow and for "Thing 4" I have to convince the rest of the "23 Things" crew why they should choose to follow it as well. 

Being relatively new to blogging I have to admit that at this point in time I am not a regular reader of any blog however I have found one thanks to the power of Google. 

The Association of College and Research Libraries blog is of interest to myself obviously because I am a Subject Librarian for an academic institute, actually I have worked in a tertiary library for almost 10 years I honestly think that it will be of interest to some of you as well. 

With a brief 20 minute look I have found the following things which may make this blog attractive to you also.

• Ease of navigation using the normal search functionality by clicking on the magnifying glass and typing in keywords as well as Categories and Tags

• Content: the posts cover a wide range of topics from Academia through to Wikipedia. I have found posts on Publishing and other subjects and themes of interest to any researcher.

• Offers examples of academic posts such as this one for conference blogging for those of us who attend and present at conferences.

• There are multiple authors which means different writing styles, which means there is a variety of voice to the posts and also expertise.

Thing 5 to come

Looking back at "Thing 2"

Thing 2: Online Security

Security hmmm I was so shocked by how terrible one of my passwords was that I had to tweet about it, and I keep finding my self drawn to checking how secure my passwords are  its quite fun but disturbing at the same time. 

I watched the video and it was interesting and discouraging. I am sure you have all felt the pain of selecting a password and then being told it must have an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter, a number, or a punctuation symbol, you  finally incorporate the needed elements press enter and the final straw Your password must be between 4 and 8 characters long frustration took over and I actually used number 2 of the 25 Worst Passwords and yes I did eventually change it to one that is not on the list.

My first Blog: The amuse bouche

He mihi

Ko Hikurangi te maunga

Ko Waiapu te awa

No Ngati Porou tōku Papa

No Te Aitanga ā Hauiti tōku Māma

no reira no Te Tairawhiti ahau.

Ko Troy Tuhou tōku ingoa.

He mihi nunui engari he mihi popoto ki a koutou katoa.

Connections are important to Māori, when being introduced or introducing ourselves we look for links with each other. This is why we use local geographic features (of our home area), our iwi affiliations and whanau (family) names in our pepeha or mihi.

Kia ora my name is Troy Tuhou and my family are from the east coast of New Zealand. I am one of the Subject Librarians at Sylvia Ashton Warner Library at the Faculty of Education, University of Auckland.

This blog marks my first attempt at writing my own blog and is "Thing 3" of a programme that I am taking part in called "23 Things for research" it is a Faculty of Education version of the Oxford University course 23 Things for Research and the 23 Research Things course from the University of Melbourne.

I registered for this course as I have played with social media but have yet to fully engage with it. Usually I start with a hiss and a roar posting and logging in daily however eventually my enthusiasm wanes and I forget to post, or don't log in for long periods of time. I think one possible reason for this is that often I don't fully comprehend the particular use of the different social media platforms another is that I often am lost for things to say (hard to believe if you are reading this, I am sure) or don't believe that what I have to say is of interest to anyone.

I have Facebook, Google +, Twitter, and Linked in accounts now I am using my Blogger account.

Even though the title of this post is "First Blog" I once wrote a blog for an assignment during my study in Information Science and as it was for a school that doesn't exist and an invented scenario I have decided not to count it.

I have to admit that I use Twitter badly and now only use Facebook as a tool to help me remember birthdays and to play games.

My hope is that with a better understanding of the practical uses for social media I can start to truly engage with the different formats using each type more effectively and that this in turn will result in more productive and effective communication to my colleagues and our students.