Thing 22 - Reflections

'23 Things' finished! Time to go back to crime-fighting.....

Well I have reached the end of 23 Things and my overall feeling is one of satisfaction. I will try and explain in this, my final post, simply how I found the experience, what I enjoyed, and what I disliked. To begin with however I will provide a few statistics that you may find interesting. My 23 Things consisted of:

• 23 Posts
• 1103 blog views (as of 21/4)
• 36 Comments
• Most commented on post: 'Thing 15: Library Thing'
• Most viewed post: Thing 1: 'Lund does Blogging,' followed by 'Thing 13: Reflections.' 

I am quite surprised at how many page views I have, and although in the blogging world this is comparatively a tiny amount, I am still quietly impressed that I have so many people visiting my blog. I do fear however that people have found it accidentally whilst looking for information on Sarah Lund of The Killing fame!

The post for which I received the most comments was the post I probably most enjoyed writing so I was pleased to get some recognition for this. I also found this post satisfying as I was able to impart some of my knowledge and help others display the Library Thing widget. This is significant I think as really this is what blogging is about: collaboration and community. If people can learn something from my blog and I from theirs then I think this is testament to the whole exercise being a great success.

Another success for me was not just helping people out 'virtually' but actually in person. Some of my colleagues and I set aside some time each week to work through the things together and I think this was helpful for all of us involved. Although many of the things weren't new to me, I found myself learning new skills in demonstrating some of the things to my colleagues, so in this respect I have found 23 Things immensely satisfying. I have also had a chance to explore in more depth some of the 'things' I have sporadically used over the years, and has actually encouraged me to start using them again having previously written them off (for example Delicious and Flickr spring to mind).

So, before this turns into an Essay (which it could, only it is Sunday night and I should have finished this last week!), I will now highlight may favourite and least favourite aspects of 23 Things:

• Favourite 'thing' overall: Twitter. 

This was quite hard to call, as there were many 'things' that I enjoyed, but Twitter is truly something I use everyday. Although I am by no means a prolific 'tweeter' myself, I do check it regularly and follow a number of feeds that truly keep me in touch not only with the world around me, but also some of the things that are most important to me professionally and personally. Twitter is a wonderful tool, and once you get your head around it, is very simple to use. I can't recommend it highly enough.

• Least favourite 'thing': Netvibes.

Ugly looking, clunky and with a distracting number of tacky widgets. It was a shame this was one of the first 'things' we were introduced to as I think it may have put a lot of people off. Looking at reviews of it however I seem to find myself in a minority with my dislike of it. It has also been touted as a worthy replacement to Google Reader. With this, I disagree and shall say no more than that!

• What 'thing' am I most likely to use at work? Probably Thing 1: Blogging itself.

This question highlights one issue I have with 23 Things in general and that is it is clearly predominantly designed for Librarians and Information professionals. In my working life as a Library Assistant I see no need for many of the things, and bibliographic software and Slideshare perhaps stand out the most here. That is not to say that being aware of many of the 'things' isn't valuable and by virtue of the fact that I work in an academic library and face a wide variety of enquiries everyday, knowing about many of the 'things' is actually quite important. I would like to think that I can in fact incorporate many into my working life, but I may only be able to do this by actively making these a part of my job. So for instance I have been actively involved in setting up and contributing to the WSA library blog, and also have access to the library's twitter feed and facebook page (mwahahaha the power!!), but I got involved in these because I put myself forward and really find that I get increased job satisfaction through these.

So to conclude, I have very much enjoyed 23 Things and although it has been a bit of a struggle at times to fit it all in, I do feel satisfied with the amount of work I have put in and the knowledge I have gained in doing so. Thank you organisers of 23 Things for all your hard work and guidance. Also, please be aware that it is my birthday this Friday - a day before the prize giving if I am not mistaken ;-)