I’m writing this morning from the National Writing Project’s web presence working retreat, an event I’ve been fortunate enough to have been involved with as a facilitator since its inception last year. This is the second time we’ve run the event, which is an attempt to provide some time and structure for teams from writing project sites who wish to think strategically about their web presence. We’ll spend the weekend thinking through the identity of our respective organizations and what we can do online to both reflect and support that identity and the good work that all of us are trying to do in our various locations around writing and teaching and learning. That means lots of things to lots of people, but there’s plenty of intersection in the general trends.
The event is pretty intense, and, while designed for sites to think about their organizational web presences, is very helpful to me as I think about my personal and professional life online. One of the big questions that we’re asking people to think about is how their web presences are a reflection of and a lens into their work. My personal web presence should be like that, too. But I’m not sure that it is. I’ve got content spread around the web in a variety of places, everywhere from Flickr to Twitter to this blog to my wiki (which is desperately in need of an update or seven) to my work with other groups and schools and people. There’s plenty of personal mixed in with the professional, and I think the boundaries between those two areas of my life, never truly separate in “real, offline” life, continue to blur and fade and shift from day to day, week to week, month to year. (That’s a good thing, I think, for the most part.) How do I, as a blogger and a teacher and a learner and a father and a husband and a citizen, do my best to ensure a consistent presence across the Internet that reflects what I believe to be important? Just as essential - how do I bring all of that content that sits all over the place into some sort of a coherent whole? Or do I need to, so long as all that content in all of those places, and others, reflects the message(s) that I want so desperately to convey - that learning and writing and thinking and engaging and passionately working for the benefit of others are essential habits and skills for everyone, regardless of background, culture, or profession?
I think, too, about what “web presence” means. Having a presence and creating a presence are not necessarily the same thing. Being and doing aren’t necessarily the same, either.
These are some of my thoughts as I head into a pretty intensive planning process, where, if last year is any indication, I’ll learn as much, and probably a great deal more, than I’m hoping to facilitate. This summer, I’ll be doing a three-hour session on presence tools, a class of software that are about making one’s presence known in some formal and informal ways, Twitter being one of the tools that I’m most curious about at the moment. I also would like to explore more about digital identity, a conversation I sort of started here a little while back. My work this weekend will continue to influence that work. Lots to learn. Luckily, I’ve got plenty of smart folks here to learn from and with. We should all be so lucky.
