End of the road or beginning of the journey?

MACPA's multiweek tutorial on Web 2.0 enabled me to learn about technologies I had long been curious about (Second Life, Facebook, Flickr, Wikis) and to refine my knowledge of those I had some familiarity with (blogging, YouTube, podcasts).

The applications I enjoyed the most were blogging and the online image generator. I had been interested in blogging but never took the time to create and use a blog. The program, with its mandatory blogging at regular intervals, provided considerable practice at putting one's thoughts together in this format. The online image generator was lots of fun and could be a good source of humor in all sorts of communications. I certainly plan to use blogging for Tomorrow's CPA, once we have it established.

I was less enthusiastic about SecondLife and FaceBook. SecondLife may have a great future, but I find it very difficult to navigate, the avatars are cold and eerie and the whole linden dollars concept is remote to me. It was nevertheless intriguing to participate in the program and at least establish a working knowledge. I was also not entirely comfortable with FaceBook and MySpace, though I think FaceBook as it evolves will replace personal emails. To me it was too much like dating Web sites and leaves one too open to a rather more personal type of spam. I have already been subjected to unwanted contacts and I don't even have a profile or picture.

Several applications seemed to me fairly redundant for my purposes, such as Technorati, del.icio.us, Rollyo. It is possible that in the future I will find a use for them, but for now they seem to duplicate resources like bloglines and Google that are already sufficient for me.

In my previous blogs I identified the applications I thought would be most useful to our members. I know SecondLife can be a marvelous resource for meetings, recruiting and marketing in general. Our blogs and podcasts are off to a positive start. Internally, Wikis can be an effective way to brainstorm and hold other types of dialogue. While the social networking sites have captivated the younger generation I am not sure that at the present stage of evolution they offer us much opportunity as an association. My sense is that these sites are strictly social and an escape from such issues as career or school.

What stands out most for me is the enormous benefit MACPA has provided staff. This has been such an imaginative yet disciplined introduction to technologies we really need to be acquainted with--both professionally and in our personal lives. Even if we don't apply these learnings regularly, our technological literacy has been considerably increased. I like the week to week progression, the blogging commentary, and the incentive to complete the whole course. We all owe MACPA thanks for putting our continuing education as a priority.

I do not have any important suggestions about administering the program. I would hope there is some kind of follow up to encourage people to use these applications, and maybe future tutorials to refine our skills or introduce new applications as they emerge.