Thing 3

Branding myself. I looked on Google, Yahoo and Bing. Google produced pages I expected, a few Twitter links, some that were not me but have the same name and the others that were professionally related - a recent presentation and 2 things that are quite old now. Yahoo had results that were not me until about 5 or 6 down, where it has picked up an old professionally related thing and then Bing, very interesting, mostly it was all other people with the same name except for 1, the recent presentation that Google picked up.

Does this bother me? Looking at the things that are actually me - no I think I'm OK with it. You may see lots of mentions to Mistee Mog, who is in fact my cat, alongside it is my name. There may also be a black cat as my profile picture (Twitter account), she is the real Mistee Mog. I've failed dismally in finding a picture for Blogger, I can't find anything suitable in my photos, my Facebook profile picture was taken at the computer with my web cam and went straight to my Facebook profile, I apparantly can't do the same thing on Blogger.

Splitting everything up, Facebook is my most personal profile, Blogger is my most professional and Twitter is somewhere in between. Although I recently went through it and made it more professional and may indeed change my profile picture to me rather than my cat. This will still leave me with the Mistee Mog moniker, so I wonder whether it is worth it.

That brings me onto why I used Mistee Mog to start with, well because it is consistant. If I use my work e-mail address and leave to work somewhere else, it is not defining me anymore and I would have to update various bodies with a new e-mail address (presumably my new work one). By using Mistee Mog, I have something that is still me no matter where I work. I chose this to start with, over my own name, because at the time, it was suggested it was a way of reducing spam (and yes it did work). It was a way of keeping in touch with personal friends only. Then I moved jobs and realised that if I use my work e-mail, I will have to update it everytime I move on, so I started to use Mistee Mog for more professional reasons.

The visual brand - I guess you could say that Mistee Mog currently is part of that. The colour scheme I have never really thought about, I just choose something I like. It does tend to be lilac / purple (I love Joeyanne's purple flowers), as these are my favourites colours. I occasionally venture into a light / pastel pink, which is not my favourite colour but I think works better as a background than others I've seen and certainly better than my next favourite colour - black. This would also make Mistee Mog blend in too much. The green and blue of the blog is OK, it is inoffensive and hopefully accessible. This is my task for the week now, sorting the colours on my various accounts and still trying to find the right picture for my blog.

How often do you blog?

So now I've officially got a blog and have told various people (friends and relatives), I keep getting asked have you blogged today? When I reply no, i'm asked why not? Well because I have nothing to say today.
Is there any kind of rule of thumb on how often you blog? I've had a look at the blogs I'm following, most of them have been around for awhile and are experienced bloggers. There doesn't seem to any set rules or am I missing something?
I guess for the purposes of cpd23, it has to be at least once a week when you are reflecting on the Thing you've just done. For me it might be more as I'm supposed to be using it to help record thoughts for my Chartership too.

Work I have done and am yet to do

Today I started doing the performance reviews for my staff. I had mine last week. This time I have asked everyone to bring examples with them of how they have met the targets that were set. This is an attempt to get them to engage more with the process. I took examples to my review and thought that it went really well, as it made me focus on what I had done at work over the last year. It was quite amazing to see how much I had achieved. 


Another tool I use to see how much I have achieved is an electronic to do list, much easier than multiple post it notes I used to use. My list of choice is Ta Da List ( http://tadalist.com/ ) which allows me to create many lists (so I have a current one and build one for the future), share it with my colleagues, who can add and edit and once a task is completed, when you check it off, it is moved off the to do list but remains visible as a completed action. The only downside really is that it gives you a figure of how many tasks you have left to do, this can be quite daunting especially when you keep adding to the list. And for those of you who have an iPhone, yes there is an app.

Twitter

That's excellent, I've successfully managed to post the blog link to my Twitter account, which is linked to my Facebook account, so it should be showing there too. Yes it is, I've just checked. 
Tomorrow I will try to add a picture of myself and work on my profile a bit.

Thing 2

Well I have done Thing 2 now as well, apart from the looking at other blogs bit, as the Delicious link wouldn't work for me - possibly because i'm at work, I'll try later. I keep clicking My Account to move around when I want to get back to my home page, which then means an extra click back to Blogger - that's annoying, I know it's only 1 click away but it's making me feel inept at using the technology. Anyone else out there had the same problem when starting off?
And what's with the time? When I'm writing it shows the correct time (BST for me) but the post (and preview) show something really early, maybe an American time. Can it be changed to English time? That's something I'll have to explore.

First blog post

Ok, so this is my first blog and first post. I've set it up because my Chartership mentor recommended it as a good way of recording what i'm doing and help develop reflective writing skills. Also I have seen e-mails about cpd23, which looks like a very good thing to take part in to help increase IT skills. It was mentioned in my Chartership workshop too. I already have Facebook, Twitter and Delicious accounts (and much to my surprise this morning a gmail account!) and feel as though i've just dipped my toes into Web 2.0, hopefully this experience will help me upskill in this area. Last week I was at the CoFHE Conference, which has encouraged me to do this and try something new.