A Semester in Review

Another semester has once again come to an end; I swear it comes quicker every year.  Looking back over everything we covered I’m starting to realize how much I actually learned. I started ALES 204 believing I understood enough about social networking to get me through life. I had a Facebook and twitter account. I knew how to look up peer reviewed scientific articles.  Wikipedia’s unreliability was not a surprise.  I had even watched RIP: a remix manifesto so creative commons was already a part of my vocabulary. To summarize this rant, I felt very secure and informed in my ability to navigate social media sites. As a result of this confidence, I walked out of ALES204 after our first class and was a tad bit flippant. Who was this young women teaching me how to use twitter!? And why on earth does more than half my class actually needs to learn this!! Dr. Jessica Laccetti soon earned my respect and attention. Not only did she introduce me to vital professional sites like LinkedIn, but Dr. Laccetti slowly began to awake my passion for the growth and future of social media. 

In attempting to write this final reflective blog post I literally “wasted” 3-4 hours. Why you may ask? Well, I really couldn’t pick one topic to focus on. As I started to look deeper and deeper into futurecasting, our final lecture, I began getting excited about all the amazing things to come. I was browsing a yahoo article that outlined the 7 things Stephen Abram, and international librarian, thinks will happen in 2012. Smartphones for all, commerce on Facebook and advertising via GPS and geotagging are just a few that blew my mind away. I don’t know if any of you have seen the move The Minority Report, but they were futurecasting in that movie. Check it out!

The Minority Report. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBaiKsYUdvg

In the above scene is an example of geotagging, aka advertising tailored to the consumer. Abram predicts that businesses will be able to write a consumer profile for us and advertise directly through our phones based on that profile. That’s unbelievable! I can only imagine the opportunities as a dietician. A quick scan on google tells me you have frequented weightloss and fitness sites and from there I can sent you promotions that suit you. A world where you could be potentially at everyones finger tips.  

But beyond the weird and wonderful, I really did learn something about professionalism and social networking. It no longer terrifies me to have more than one social profile on the Internet. Before ALES 204 I was worried I couldn’t maintain an Internet profile as professional as my performance in person. In fact, I am excited and enthusiastic about building on the basics I worked on in class. Detailing my CV, connecting to past, present and new employers on LinkedIn, blogging and discovering professional blogs related to my field,  there is a world of new job opportunities I never knew I had. Alike the picture below, I have been given the musicians to orchestrate a job profile for employers all over the world. 

Jay Starbun. (2011). Retrieved from http://socialsteak.com/2011/09/30/5-tips-for-community-managers/

Check out some blogs I found comment worthy!

1. Lina Marie Hegberg's Blog

2. Steph Nash's Blog

3. Erika Brow's Blog

4. An Apple for Your Thoughts

5. Chelsea Livingstone's Blog

Which party should I vote for?!...There's an app for that.

With the election buzz heating up and a constant mob of campaigners at ever corner, it seems only logical to write a blog post about it. I have only been of voting age for two years now and experienced one election in that time, and honestly, its just overwhelming. Not only do we need to sort through the copious campaign information from each party, but whose is to say any of these guys are being honest? Fortunately for me I ran across a twitter post linking me to an interactive interview with the four main candidates (PC, Wildrose, Liberal and NDP). The post was simple: An over-coffee interview hitting on the main issue facing Alberta. This was perfect for someone like me as I could listen to the party platforms whilst checking my emails/twitter/facebook/eclass. Unlike my mother and the majority of her generation, I didn’t read the paper, or watch the news or read pamphlets to gain party information because those things don’t really have a major role in my life. Students like myself are always on the go. My iphone is my third lung and I do everything with it so if you can get information to me via my iphone, I’m yours! Because the role of social media in politics intrigued me so much I began searching the web for some positive examples. I ran across a blog called Interactive Multimedia Technology written by Lynn Marentette. She blogs about every modern technology and social media. One of her blog posts sparked my interest.

TED talk. Jennifer Pehkla discussed her involvement in the program Code for Government and the growing use of apps to make government more efficient and effective. http://www.ted.com/talks/view/lang///id/1381

Code for Government encourages the use of apps to make government more effective as citizens can now take a more active role in their communities. Pehkla brings up a crucial point, ”there is a generation out there that’s grown up on the internet and they know that its not that hard to do things together you just have to architect the systems that way”. We are moving from united within a nation to united internationally; I can tweet to people in china and share photos on flickr with people in Norway. The point Pehkla is trying to get at is that my generation is pro participatory citizenship; we are just lacking the gateway (social media and technology).

Screen Shot of app created by purple forge. From iTunes. Retrieved from http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/gary-mar/id445500344?mt=8

Back to the Alberta election. I came across an interview with the Wildrose leader Danielle Smith and Liberal leader Raj Sherman. The article titled “Social Media and Technology in Alberta's Provincial Election: The Leaders View”, touched on topics such as the use of twitter and Facebook, old campaign tools vs. new campaign tools and both politicians thoughts. I was disappointed to learn that neither leader really thought social media tools were all that useful. In fact, both strongly preferred old methods such as “demon dialing”, “telephone town halls” and lawn signs. I understand the point both politicians were trying to make, that older voters still want face-to-face but the fact that technology is a mere “compliment” to their campaigns is kind of insulting. For a young generation that relies, lives, breathes on the Internet I would like to be a more important consideration. Young voters can be reached and are not self-absorbed, they are quite the opposite or why would we log in to Facebook to read about OTHER people’s lives. We are a social generation, an involved generation. But like Jennifer Pehkla said we need a government that facilitates that type of citizenship. There are companies that design apps for this type of thing one example being purple forge. How awesome would it be to, while riding the bus, pull up an app that shows the major issues of the day and allows you to directly contact your MLA. I want to know if you are closing down a school, need snow shovellers in my community, what your doing to decrease crime and drug use on stony plain road. This is where I live; and similar to the say I have when I tweet, I want to to have a say in my community and city in a way that is convenient and directly at my fingertips. 

To read about another bloggers thoughts on the growth of social media and technology check out this blog!