Twittermentary

One interesting thing that happened today was that I had the privilege to meet director Siok Siok and team who gave a special screening of Twittermentary followed by Q&A.

Not too long ago, I was one of those people in the world who saw no value in Twitter. I simply could not understand how much can a short 140 character long micro blog do other than to gather people who shares with the world about their day-to-day routines. Given that I do not want to share such mundane stuff with others, if not for a past IT assignment where I programmed Twitter to link up with PayPal to make micro payments, I did not bother to use it at all. Till recently, I had a paradigm shift. Pretty late, but better late than never :)

Anyway, I was thinking that yes, Twitter as a tool has limited value. However, huge value comes when people use it in a meaningful way. This is due to the formation of a 'digital community' where a huge amount of people in the world can be much closer with each other in a way that they would have limited chance to do so in a physical world. It is a place where people can exchange ideas, thoughts and feelings with strangers, it is a place where relationships and trust can be built.

For example, from some influential people I followed, I got to know about the egypt incident way before reading the newspapers. Also, my classmates and I had a platform to continuously share and discuss about topics related to the digital media 24/7. We would otherwise never have been able to do so as a class other than the limited 3hrs weekly.

In fact, I was reflecting on the key takeaways of the Twittermentary Q&A today, and realised that my Prof and classmates have done all the key summary for me! Furthermore, I could personally thank the main speaker hours after the event ended. How rare is that? Thanks Twitter (:

Key Takeaways from Siok Siok:

'I wanted an outcome I did not expect.' Maybe this is the mindset we need when we deal with new/digital media. - @trixiayong

'The test of a good idea is whether or not the kernel remains true when others start developing the idea further.' - @communicateaisa

'Crowdsourcing is harder than it seems. You need a very large user base to make it work' - @communicateaisa

'Twittamentary lesson. Twitter for crowdsourcing is the execution side of a good idea. U can't just sit at home tweeting' - @communicateaisa


Side Note: Teaser on Twittermentary 

What Will Matter

Today, I chose to live a life that matter. I took one day off my computer to celebrate my best friend's birthday, bought chinese new year clothes with my boyfriend, and spend long hours chatting with my family members. Though I feel slightly guilty for not doing any work today, it is overcomed by happiness as I think that this is a perfect day. I believe that there is no limit to the amount of work I have to do, but there is a limit to the amount of time I have with my closest ones. I will catch up with work after this blog post. (:

To sum things up, here's one of my favourite poem to share with you today. When was the last time you spent quality time with your precious ones?

 What Will Matter

Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end.
There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days.
All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else.

Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.
It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.
Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear.

So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans and to-do lists will expire.
The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.
It won't matter where you came from or what side of the tracks you lived on at the end.
It won't matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.
Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.

So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured?

What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built; not what you got, but what you gave.

What will matter is not your success, but your significance.

What will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught.

What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.

What will matter is not your competence, but your character.

What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you're gone.

What will matter is not your memories, but the memories that live in those who loved you.

What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what.

Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident.
It's not a matter of circumstance but of choice.
Choose to live a life that matters.

Author: Michael Josephson

The Most Influential Universities in Singapore on Twitter

Inspired by a post on The Most Influential Colleges on Twitter, here's a consolidation of the most influential universities in Singapore on Twitter for your reading interests. Enjoy! (:


#1 - @NUSingapore

#2 - @ntuadmissions

#3 - @smuadmissions

Appendix

NUS

NTU

SMU

Overcoming Inertia

It has been eight years since I last posted in a blog.

Back then, I was a young teenager who rode on the blogging hype and blogged about everything and anything under the sun. It was fun as I used to think that a blog is a brilliant avenue to pour out raw emotions and thoughts, no different from a diary - in fact, I thought that it was better than a diary as I could set a javascript password to protect my blog, sharing secrets only to my closest friends. This blogging habit lasted 2-3 years till I got to learn more about data security and privacy on the internet, and then realized that my simple javascript password protection can be easily bypassed and allows my blog to be accessible by the general public. Since Blogger did not have a user friendly functionality of setting a blog private then, I stopped blogging for good.

Even though good blogs do tempt me to contribute my own content at times, I never had a strong enough circumstance that push me back to this digital media world. I always used the lack of content inspiration or my limited command of the English Language as an excuse to remain hidden in the shadows. Eventually, this inertia became subconsciously too huge for me to overcome.

Now then, WHY have I created a blog and start blogging once again?

Yes, being able to submit something for my Digital Media Benchmarking Assignment could be a contributing factor, but knowing myself, it is insufficient a reason to get me cracking. Fundamentally, I will only put in effort in doing something which I believe there is value, and no, grades have never been large enough a motivation for me.

So what value have I seen?

I have seen the power of personal branding, wow-ed at discoveries like the law of emergence, gotten really amazed by the power of weak ties through a case study on Twittamentary (I even developed a prototype web application here that could be a platform for everyone to do projects in a decentralized manner), seen new perspectives to corporate communications via Bob's speech... -- all these happened within 4 weeks ever since I took a module with Prof Michael Netzley.

Finally, I have broken the ice with this blog post. Being overwhelmed by 'new' tools like RSS that feeds me 1000+ news daily, never ending tweets at twitter, and blog posts by my peers with near perfect writing styles will not hinder me any longer. This marks the beginning of my exploration of the digital media, and I eventually hope to be able to figure out the best type of content I can gather, sieve, and share with every one of you.

Let the journey begin!