Author: TechCommGeekMom

Marcia Johnston demonstrates how much data can be gleaned and experience shared from a conference Tweet stream like those for LavaCon 2014.

Source: techwhirl.com

Hashtags are not flawless, but they are a great way to track a trend. I’ve often recommended to people to use hashtag searches when trying to find people with common interests, like #techomm or #elearning or #mlearning or #contentstrategy (you get the idea).  You can use hashtags to participate in a conversation, Twitter, the ones that predominantly lead the way with hashtags, is a great resource this way. (I don’t know if they started the hashtag movement, but they sure made it their own!) 

My friend Marcia Riefer Johnston wrote this interesting article about how Twitter hashtags came into play during the 2014 LavaCon conference (I was among some of those Twitter posts counted).  Doing analytics on this kind of social media stream is not perfect, as Marcia points out, but her study shows the impact of the hashtag for this event. 

Take a look. Really. Right now. Put your comments on what you think about the impact of hashtags below. 

See on Scoop.it – M-learning, E-Learning, and Technical Communications

In the world of technical communication tools, the public faces of the companies are men, yet the field is predominately female. is this a bad marketing strategy?

Source: www.sharonburton.com

Sharon Burton reposted this September 2012 blog post today, and it’s interesting to see that even two years later, the points that she makes are still valid. I always noticed that gender imbalance as well. Do you agree with her assessment? Put your comments below. 

–techcommgeekmom

See on Scoop.it – M-learning, E-Learning, and Technical Communications

Source: www.linkedin.com

Interesting article. As wearable tech evolves, it’s interesting to read the perspective of this author, and listing the ups and downs of being a Google Glass tester. It makes me glad that I ended up returning mine. I still think that Glass could’ve had potential, but even after a year of development, I had expected more when I had temporarily received mine. Perhaps one day it will explode with many uses. Perhaps the world isn’t ready for something like this device or something like it, but with each new wrist wearable and other personalized wearable devices, we get closer to the ideal that Glass was aiming for, and that’s what counts. 

–techcommgeekmom

See on Scoop.it – M-learning, E-Learning, and Technical Communications

When you think about history, you probably think about dates, events, and other boring information you were forced to memorize in school. Instead, you should think of history as medicine that can be prescribed to your modern problems.

Source: lifehacker.com

This is a great video and article brought to my attention by Craig Cardimon. As someone with a Bachelor’s degree in History, and raised by a historian father, I concur with this video. History, above all else, provides perspective and understanding of how we got to be where we are now, why our culture is the way it is wherever we are, why language has developed the way it has, etc.  Understanding history of anything–even something like the development of a product in tech writing–has its merits. Check out the video on this page, and think about it. What do you think? Do you think history has its place?

–techcommgeekmom

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There are many opportunities for linguistic confusion between Brits and Americans—slang, Southern slang and pronunciations can all cause blank looks, […]

Source: www.bbcamerica.com

Ah, the little nuances of the English language between those on either side of the "pond".  Read this one–it’s great. 

–techcommgeekmom

See on Scoop.it – M-learning, E-Learning, and Technical Communications