Jeffrey Keefer

When you said "balance is key -- too much of any one diet does not a healthy person make," it made me think about our session's title and how this can really be subtitle:

Multimembership:  Balance for the Social Networker. 

Jo Ann, I really like how you stated that you are "gradually appreciating letting some things go and being more present and mindful of the moment." I think I need to make a mantra out of this . . .

I find myself spending much more time online with teaching, blogging, and the like than I do F2F (outside my full-time job) with other people. Interesting how the social and work and research and such have not only migrated online, but have come to dominate my online experience.

Even now, for example, I am teaching a graduate class that meets 6 hours a week (F2F) and an online class on top of that (apart from my full-time F2F job), and I find myself online to try to relax while blowing off steam with colleagues, many of whom I have never met F2F. Of course, meeting and working with others are no longer distance and time constrained.

I think our session here is very timely indeed!

Sue, I am glad to be working with you (and Bronwyn and Sylvia) on this topic, and really look forward to sharing this with a much wider community here at SCoPE and FOC08 who will bring their own insights and contributions here.

I am Jeffrey Keefer from New York City. I work as a senior instructional designer at Visiting Nurse Service of New York. I also work as an adjunct instructor at New York University, where I teach in the Leadership and Human Capital Management department and in the Management Communication department. I am currently teaching a graduate course, Research Process and Methodology, and a continuing education course, Principles and Practices of Online Course Creation and Instructional Design. All of my work now relates to our topic of multimembership, and this could not have come at a better time.

I recently commented to a colleague that I really wish I had some more friends and colleagues who live close by to meet me for dinner and drinks, but the fact is that my social and professional networks are primarily online and had from a distance. This is why I have become so interested in this topic, as it is increasingly integral to my working and life. This is the community to discuss and process my dinner and drink experiences!

As I mentioned on the VoiceThread, I have to take drastic strategies to manage the deluge of information. Having collaborated to conduct research, learn from others, and make meaning in a complex world, I understand how valuable it is to manage multimemberships. I am really looking forward to sharing and learning from everybody here in our two-week time together. 

Nik, I think this is a very interesting way of handling (social) information overload. It sounds like you engage in public reflective practice with all this information via your blog, sharing what you find while simultaneously processing it. From this perspective, it seems blogging plays multiple roles for your managing multimembership, with your own creation of content and meaning in the process!

Richard, this has been an eye-opening session for me, and I even appreciate the way you so graciously are ending (or transitioning) this experience. I feel I am beginning to think about some of these topics in different ways, and really really like this how this first part of the process is concluding while paving the way for a potentially much larger next step! I hope to be able to be involved with this moving forward.