Wednesday 9 April 2014

Filtering for Future ProFessional Frontiers #pkm14

As the Personal Knowledge Management (PKM14) course moves into its second week, all the participants are asked to filter their social media / their networks. We are suggested to use more advanced filters: e.g. using feeds from people or/and groups, using automated filters of choice (e.g. hootsuite or tweetdeck to filter the personal twitter and other streams).

First I took a look at hootsuite (suggested by Ronda Zelezny-Green) and tweetdeck (both of these are free to some extend. Another paid option is sproutsocial which has wonderful options, but fits more with an enterprise type of social media stream analysis. I tested both and looked at other user comparisons to get an idea of which tool would suit me. I had both used them briefly in the past, but not to their full potential. And as it has been some years now, it is clear that I am better at understanding what these types of tools can do, and the overall structure of the tools in themselves is an improved user experience as well. For me Hootsuite works (but without integrating it into my browser, that feature was the reason why I stopped using hootsuite in the past: too much bling makes me angry and puts me off a tool - but that is me, not the tool).

After only two days, I already found some immediately relevant information (e.g. more status updates on learning analytics for informal learning, more about weak/strong ties in online communities), but at the same time I am loosing more time as I got lost in an information loop. Again... knowledge management is about finding useful tools, optimizing or personalizing them to fit your own goals, and limiting your time on those tools to get the best experience out of them (for me the best experience is: activating a peer network. One immediate benefit of Hootsuite is being able to schedule tweets, this saves time and will - eventually - keep me from returning to my streams in Hootsuite until a moment in time I consciously choose and limit.

The information streams in Hootsuite are currently based on one list, and keywords (e.g. mLearning, learning analytics). I started to build MyKeyPeople list within twitter: adding those twitterers that are of importance to me, that provide new insights, links, ideas.

But I do realize this is person-based, now - like a fellow participant Kavi ( ) mentioned - knowledge can be distilled from a higher level by using twitter lists and combining these, or to search for good curators/curations and link these to a RSS/feedread or scoopit... I still have to work on those options. So that makes a good to do. 
Speaking of to do lists, another participant of the course (Shane Johnson) mentioned todoist, a cross-platform software to plan your time or project. Will have to see if this works for me. 

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