community networks

Friday last I took an hour or so out to help Andy McMillan (@goodonpaper) with a presentation on social networking at the Community Arts Forum. Andy didn’t need help but it was a worthy cause – and ended up being interesting enough. We started with a brief intro to FaceBook, punctuated with the question, “How many of you are on FaceBook already?”

About half the room raised their hands which rendered a little of what we were planning to talk about obsolete and in order to move things along we had to improvise – Andy had thoughtfully added an extra slide at the end detailing WordPress and Ning which we explained would possibly be useful tools in constructing a social network for the community.

We also covered peripheral subjects like security ( not telling everyone on FaceBook that you’re off on a two week holiday with your address displayed and photos of your expensive equipment on show, making sure the people you friend are people you trust ) and also appropriateness (employers and recruiters sometimes look at FaceBook -at least the good ones do) and they’ll not want to see updates about your drunken debauchery at the weekend, skiving work on a Monday or Friday or the game you play with your old college mates which involves posting pictures of rutting canines on each others Walls).

I’d be happy to repeat the experience, covering some subjects maybe in more depth and, hopefully with Internet access this time.