A few years ago I went on a training course through work.  It wasn’t one of those awful ones that you can’t wait to get out of – it was the sort you’d happily do again the next week. The trainers were great; they had us moving around, doing things and most importantly, they had us thinking rather than spouting information we were just supposed to absorb.

One of the things they made us do was decide how we felt about social media.  If you saw its value you went to one side of the room.  If you didn’t you went to the other.  I was the only one on my side of the room…against social media all on my own.

A year later I finally realised I was being a bit of a dinosaur and got a Facebook account.  Then I started my blog.  I kind of got the hang of things but wasn’t particularly revolutionary on the social media front.  Which is why it’s kind of funny that in the last few weeks I’ve started a new role in my old team – and I pushed for it.  My new role is:  Getting the group I work in engaged on our new social media type of intranet (I’m yet to get a job title.  I’m hoping it will be a bit more catchy than that.)  At the moment a lot of the group are next to that wall I stood at on my training course.  I just need to pull them to the other side.  The only small problem is that there are 22,000 of them.  Yes that is 22 THOUSAND.

It’s a bit of a challenge.  Especially when they are spread all over the world and I’ll be in just the one place.  But it has made me realise that I really need to make more of an effort with external social media so I can understand the big picture – it might help in understanding the work one more.  I’ve been looking at all sorts of things that are out there now, but the one I have avoided after a brief foray is Twitter.  I need to practice short, sharp writing and I need to understand exactly how it works so when I get that question ‘Is this work thing more Facebook, Twitter or Google Circles?’ again, I can answer with a bit more any authority.   I’m doing more research too, but this is the obvious one I can combine with the blog.

So for those of you that tweet, please will you come and play?  I’m @thepogblog.  I’ll post blog links, like I do on Facebook, but I’ll also try to post some of the little things that never make it to the blog.  See it as your special link to my brain.  Or perhaps that is more of a deterrent….  In time I may even work out how to interact with people on there, you never know.

And maybe, just maybe it will help me do a better job at work.  Because you know those 22,000 people?  They all need training by the end of the year!  :o/

Well, they tweet!