I'm an experiential learner.

There's something about practicing something and getting the hang of it by experience that tends to lock in what you're learning that much better.  And there's also something about practicing to the point where things are in reflex memory as well.

So it's been an interesting six months getting involved more deeply in social media.

Readers might be surprised to know I've actually been using the net since 1996, when I started learning how to use it for a personal research project.  But this year, it's been the first time I've really put that much experience into practice in such a concentrated way.

Perhaps it had to do with the circumstances.  Six-and-a-bit months ago, in January, I'd finally changed from dialup to broadband.  My mobile phone contract had ended and the new one negotiated allowed me to get an iPhone and pay it off to the provider for the next two years.  And I'd started downloading a few apps like Twinkle.  It was also around that time I first looked at using Twitter.  The infrastructure was there.

Of course, the events of February and March meant I had one of those "thrown-in-at-the-deep-end" learning curves in social media, as the Victorian bushfires occurred and my niece was endangered by one of the major fires.  Twitter proved an incredibly good way to know what was happening in her area and even to give her some updates on the situation.  Then it proved a good way of helping my community.

In the months since then, it's been nice to be involved in the Tweetupmellers tweetup and do some work with photographing the tweetup and also conducting interviews of Melbourne's most talented and up-and-coming Twitter/social media people.

There's also been some experimenting with some new services, like Audioboo, Twitcam and a couple of others.

So far the greatest privilege was doing the videoing of the Sustainable Building Workshop at Kinglake West, a community event to help bushfire victims/survivors in the rebuilding phase.

So where from here?

I consider these first six months my basic craft-learning.  And there's been a lot learnt.

The next six months?  Time to do some advanced learning.  Start spreading my wings and learning to fly with it.

The experience continues.

 

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The Hall at Kinglake West is very intact, with no sign of damage from February's fires, sitting only a hundred metres or so from the local CFA. However, if you go out the back and look over to the left side, the trees tell an important story. Just how close things came.

On the other hand, so much green grass spring up shows how things are slowly, surely, returning back a bit closer to normal in the region.

The Diner itself and the shop next to it are intact, but these trees show how close things were during the February bushfires.

Sent from my iPhone

Sent from my iPhone