Stumbling uncertainly into a brave new world

This first post is dedicated to my “very web 2.0” colleague Elizabeth Wilkinson, a fellow careers consultant, who has (in the short two months I’ve been in post at the University of Manchester as Careers Consultant with a specific remit for “the web and new technologies”) encouraged and nudged me and given me lots of food for thought about all these kinds of things. Check out her postgrad careers blog.

When I was fretting about the “pace of change” the other day, a friend observed that he’d surprised himself by getting hooked on the Nintendo Wii (I have to confess that what I had in my head was “We” before an article on the BBC website about the impressive sales of the console put me straight!). I reflected that I’m perhaps just a bit too old to keep in touch with the increasingly rapid advances in technology without really trying hard, and just a bit too young to have teenage children to do it for me!

I suppose in some ways I do see myself as a bit of a web 2.0 neophyte stumbling uncertainly into this brave new world, but at least knowing I want to be there is a start, and I will try not to hide behind the [cont...]

[...cont] sofa! Actually, I confess to finding myself both curiously fascinated by the power of web and the so-called “new” or “emerging” technologies, and excited by their very real potential to change the way we live and work for good. The last few weeks has seen me jettisoning Internet Explorer in favour of the new social networking browser Flock, setting up feeds to help me keep in touch with what’s new in the world of careers and technology (as well as just how rainy it’s likely to be in Manchester in the next few days…). I’ve been excited by the wonders that are screencasts, and had a go at setting up a wiki, among other things. And of course it’s already been ages since – like so many of us – I was first seduced by the likes of Facebook, del.icio.us, Wikipedia and Flickr.

So I decided to set up this blog to share with you my journey into the world of web 2.0 (and perhaps 2.1, 2.11, 3.0, 4.0?), and in particular its applications (both existing and potential) for our work as careers practitioners. I hope to bring you snippets, titbits and links to news, websites and other technologies, as well as what’s “new and hot” in the careers world. I also want to develop some “quickstart” pages on some of the new technologies like feeds, social bookmarking, podcasts, video and screencasts, social networking, wikis and blogs, with examples of how they’re already being used by careers services and third party content providers. But for all of this to be useful and interesting, and in the true spirit of web 2.0, I hope you will share your own thoughts, ideas and resources with me here too, as well as put me straight when I mess it up and get my facts wrong! Ultimately, I’d like to consider us setting up a social network for careers practitioners, perhaps in Ning… OK, perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself a bit there.

Anyway, more soon, but in the meantime, for more about the purpose of this blog or who I am, check out the About this blog and the About me pages.