Sue Wolff

Hello and welcome to our seminar!

I am Sue Wolff, from Seattle, Washington. I am just beginning a new job in higher education specializing in curriculum and faculty development, but before that was consulting with nonprofit directors and educators on using technology to advance the mission of their organizations.

My entry point for this seminar was the Facilitating Online Communities course (FOC08) offered through Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand, facilitated by Leigh Blackhall. Multi-membership is a core facet of my professional life. I practically live online and belong to more networks, groups, lists, and social communities than I can even think of at one time. Immersing myself is the way I learn how people are struggling, surviving, innovating, learning, and growing with web-based resources.

I will be facilitating the discussion threads here as we collect stories and explore strategies for managing our memberships in so many online groups, networks and communities.

To begin:

• Listen and try to leave a comment on the Voice Thread. What helps you navigate and cope? We want details!
• Reply to this discussion thread with a short intro. Tell us where you heard about this seminar and what drew you. If you are dropping by in the second week, include this information the first time you post, wherever that is.

Nov 1-8:

• We will post the survey responses and summaries of the stories and tips collected from the Voice Thread on the SCoPE wiki. I will try to summarize and link to them too.
• Start a new thread anytime. What are we learning about the ways people cope with multimembership?

Our discussion is already generating a strong multimembership theme around time management. Karen Baker introduced the question, "What advice or strategies do you have or use to maximize your involvement in multiple online social networks in the most time and cost-efficient way?"

This image was made with Wordle and reflects some data that shows most people who took our survey spend 10-30 minutes per week on the networks and groups they listed, but what is not captured in this image is the fact that over half of participants listed at least 5 networks with this much participation!

Let's focus some discussion on the time and cost efficient strategies and also those that help you to be attentive and active in your networks/communities.