Full Circle Associates

This the second post of a two part series! (part one here) It is more inward looking to my personal experiences with Twitter. (I have also posted about Twitter here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

My experience with Twitter has happened on a number of levels. So let me pull out the reflections, shake them out, twist them around and see what sense we can make of them.

Intimacy
disambiguity - on Ambient Intimacy:

"Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. Flickr lets me see what friends are eating for lunch, how they’ve redecorated their bedroom, their latest haircut. Twitter tells me when they’re hungry, what technology is currently frustrating them, who they’re having drinks with tonight."

Twitter give me a very interesting sense of intimacy, mostly with people I don't know that well. I am still trying to understand what that means to me in my relationship with them (can it even be called a relationship?) and how much I want to know. I find myself removing people who only post intimate things off my Twitter list. I'm not quite sure why. Perhaps it is because I prefer the ideas. Or maybe because I feel uncomfortable with the level of intimacy. Or perhaps because I don't reciprocate. It is worth paying more attention to what and why I'm responding or rejecting. I also take off people who simply are advertising their latest blog post. That is not enough intimacy. So there is a gradient and I respond to it. Intimacy clearly matters to some degree.

Productivity
The big question when Twitter first hit the scene was "uh oh, another time waster." (See also Interruption below) Yes, it certainly can be a time waster. From an educator's perspective, check out Terry Freedman's review (via Stephen Downes) . He clearly states his pros and cons. As a rabid multitasker, I have a problem with the time it takes to read Twits, but not so much the interruption. But I hate the feeling of what I miss when I don't read. That is a script I have to turn off in my head because clearly I don't have enough time to read all the twits that come to me each day. Even 20%. So this tells me that I can't do mission critical, individually directed communication via Twitter. That goes back to IM or email.

Interruption
Interruption has a couple of different faces for me. One is the familiar problem of breaking concentration, providing me handy work-avoidance activities or simply wasting time. But interruption can also be a creative stimulus. If I find a way to weave "peeking at tweets" into more concentrated work, it actually can help me be more creative. If I call upon my twitterverse, they can help me be a more critical thinker. Or as Margaret Wheatley calls it, "willing to be disturbed." Because I can be intellectually a bit on the lazy side. Or see only what I want to see. From Wheatley:

There are many ways to sit and listen for the differences. Lately, I’ve been listening for what surprises me. What did I just hear that startled me? This isn’t easy – I’m accustomed to sitting there nodding my head to those saying things I agree with. But when I notice what surprises me, I’m able to see my own views more dearly, including my beliefs and assumptions.

Noticing what surprises and disturbs me has been a very useful way to see invisible beliefs. If what you say surprises me, I must have been assuming something else was true. If what you say disturbs me, I must believe something contrary to you. My shock at your position exposes my own position. When I hear myself saying, “How could anyone believe something like that?” a light comes on for me to see my own beliefs. These moments are great gifts. If I can see my beliefs and assumptions, I can decide whether I still value them.

So if my Twitter universe is diverse enough, I may be "disturbed" into learning, into reflection and into new avenues of thinking.

Segmentation
First, after I published that last post on Twitter practices, I got a twit alerting me that Chris Messina has a great wiki page thinking about how best to use Twitter for groups. The password is Tweety and if you are interested, check it out and add your thoughts. It is rich in links about Twitter in use, particularly on how groups might use it. This is a key area for both software and practice development.

My twitterverse draws from some very distinct groups. For example, I have found myself with a Twitter friends list that leans towards edubloggers and educators. I'm not quite sure how this happened, because I'm not in that field, but I sure like how this bunch of creative people think and act. Emphasis on the latter. They experiment, trade ideas, 'watch over each others' shoulders' and generally learn at warp speed. Ah.... pleasure. What I notice in this group is that they seem to know each other to some degree, are both generous with ideas and free with their questions. So the response rate is both quick and of high quality. It was primarily this group that populated the Twitter case wiki so quickly.

But I am part of other networks and groups. I seek other networks. But I can't manage the collective volume of all of them. I would like to be able to open a group view - perhaps around a stated group, tag or issue. I would like to be able to narrow my focus when I need to, and open up the full stream when I have more free time and attention. I need segmentation, or just decide to narrow my focus. Chris Messina and others have been writing on this and dreaming up solutions. Check out:

When is Twitter going to get groups?
Twittergroups

Another area of interesting segmentation is language. I have about 5 people I follow who mostly or always Twit in another language. Often I don't understand everything, but for some reason I really like seeing more than English in my Twitter stream. Again, I need to reflect more on WHY!

Ideas and Practices Going Forward
This builds on part 1 on Twitter. The useful inclusion of a tool into one's personal configuration of tools depends on both what you need to do, and the practices you use to do it. There is simply no binary good/bad for tools like Twitter. It always depends! So for me, here are the things I will continue to use Twitter for, what features I'd like to see, and practices I plan to experiment with.

• Try Twittering in Portuguese and Spanish. What happens when I change language?
• Try a Twitter game.
• Experiment with Twittercamp
• Continue to collect stories
  

What are you going to do?