Your blog is your home on the internet. If you want to say something or share a video or pictures, you've got a blog on which to post it. You don't need a web designer to help you. Just sign on and go. Gavin Wray from Podnosh (http://podnosh.com/) talks about social media theory at the PLACES Training Workshop in Birmingham, UK.

• Share your work, share what you're thinking - it doesn't have to be perfect or polished
• Blog as you learn something
• Link to other people's blogs
• Ask for feedback from your readers

A word about listening

What are people talking about online?

• Read other blogs
• Subscribe to RSS feeds: Skim read all the posts from websites that interest you
• Set up your own alerts
• What do people say on Twitter? There are plenty of clever people on Twitter with ideas you can share with your own readers. Check out Tweet Deck www.tweetdeck.com/
• Who are the experts?

Networking

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Comment on other blogs
• Communities of practice

Capturing: Managing information for reuse and sharing.

The objective is to make your work life easier.

• Social bookmarking
• Tagging
• Access notes anywhere
• Reference manager