Thing 22 - Gain and Maintain
Admittedly, 23Things has introduced me to some new Web 2.0 technologies. I had not used Flickr before this exercise, and I had never uploaded anything to YouTube. (I actually started my YouTube uploading after the Flickr Thing… Ahead of Thing 18, but still inspired by the 23Things.) I also found renewed use in RSS, and finally tried out Del.icio.us. I was also excited in what I found with Ning. So, this has been quite the exercise for me and I’ve gained a lot from it.
But how to maintain?
I mentioned at the beginning that the best way to keep myself engaged in blogging after 23Things will be to find a reason to continue with it. I think the same can be said about the other services, too. Personally, I am going to keep up with these tools by shifting over all of my previous web content over to these services. Up until recently I had been maintaining a family website where friends and relatives could go and see pictures, videos, etc. The site was officially shutdown after I could no longer find the time to maintain it. It was always being trumped by some other higher priority, such as children, work, classes, and other grown-up stuff. By the time I decided to take if offline, it had not been updated in nine months.
The Web 2.0 tools that we have been exploring could easily be teamed up to bring my family site back online. Instead of pouring hours over coding and troubleshooting, now I can lean on various services to do the heavy work while still maintaining the customizations necessary to satisfy my particular needs. Many of the items mentioned earlier in this post will be involved, as well as Tumblr.
As for others wondering how they will maintain what they have learned, I would recommend doing something similar. Find something in your daily life that could use Web 2.0 tools and make it happen. The tools are just tools. I can’t imagine being successful if your only reason for using the tools is because you want to use the tools. Put them to work for you in some fulfilling way. That is how I plan to keep them fresh in my mind, and I’d recommend the same for you.
PS: I have started this already by setting up many of the Flickr & YouTube services with our family’s ubiquitous “thezipfs” identifier. Likewise, you can check in and see how I’m doing with this at theZipfs.us. I’ll get to work on it just after comps are over ;-)
