Gotta have you on my wall... *

THING 19: INTEGRATING 'THINGS' INTO REAL LIFE

I took a look back at my Things to see what I have learnt, utilised or wholly ignored the existence of, and thought I would break it down in to the 3 main categories to see a clearer picture:

Social media
Before starting CPD23 I already had social media pretty much nailed. I was already on Twitter, had a Facebook and LinkedIn - but CPD23 made me realise (through personal branding and online presence) that if I want to start a professional online presence it takes a lot of work.  I opened a 'perfessional' twitter for library related things which freed up my personal account of library "followings" so I could see important stuff as and when it happens and it doesn't get lost amongst daily waffle, music/book/food (delete as appropriate) reviews in 140 characters and hilarious T.U.I. 

I also learnt that Twitter is more than just current awareness it's an online community too, and much easier to use than forums like LISPN. LinkedIn is still a work in progress, except I have noticed that if I search for "my name + library" in Google that my LinkedIn profile is the first hit and my Sue Hill guest blog post is hit 7, which is quite good considering there are too many (successful/established) people with my name already.  And I'm also yet to be happy with RSS feeds and I've had to create a new folder (with email rules, thnx Outlook) for the mailing lists I'm signed up for.  But it's the blogging which I've learnt the most from, and I hope to continue to blog (in a semi-professional capacity) and build up my confidence with writing so I can blog for work too.  Although I have absolutely zero followers this blog has been online for 6 months, has 30+ posts, it's most popular post has had 62 hits, has been viewed in 10 different countries around the world.  The most surprisingly it has had 1500+ hits which is crazy, but I'm putting it down to the memes.  I'm pretty proud of that.

Productivity
I'm a pretty organised person already, so I already knew about some of the "organising tools" suggested in CPD23 such as Google Drive/calendar and wikis and so on, but there are things like Evernote (and dare I say it, Dropbox) I just don't see using in the near future, although the referencing tools I most certainly will make an esteemed effort to use if (when?) I go back to studying.  As for events, it's something I want to work on further RE: organising them and I hope to be just as active next year with attending them too - I'll just learn from a CPD perspective that it's good to tweet and blog about them too (I might even use Storify!) so that's incorporating reflective practice too.

Professional development
As for professional development I will never tire of saying that it's a "work in progress" and there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever - Always strive to be better and don't get complacent.  I'm (not) looking forward to the last couple of Things (what happened to saving the best till last?!) as they are things that are constantly on my mind and leading me to worry anyway no matter how often I address them.  I'm looking to finally join CILIP too, and see what that may bring (special interest groups and real-life networking opportunities perhaps?)

* Finding a lyric for this blog-post was mighty hard.  I wanted a "dia de los muertos" related title, and they are all pretty gory (would hate to put you off from reading...) so I just stumped for this. I'm mad into skeletons and skulls (or should I say calavera) so here's a insta from my copy of Calaveras: Mexican Prints for the Day of the Dead. Oh and I'm totally psyched for the Death exhibition.