“I’m Stuart Baggs ‘The Brand’ – I’ve got a certain type of charisma.”

Whenever I think of personal brands Stuart Baggs, a recent participant on The Apprentice, pops in to my mind. Unfortunately this has a negative effect – what I see in Stuart is not charisma, but arrogance. Therefore linking the two makes me really dislike the idea of a personal brand. Instead I prefer to call it my online identity.

Jo’s post for this week’s thing asks us to consider four elements of our identity, and I will address each one in turn below.

Name used
When I first started out online I was very wary of putting my real name to anything. I had a pseudonym that I used for most accounts for around 5 years. This however was all pre-professional, that is when I was still at school or university. Since I have started creating more of a professional online presence I have started using my own name, usually in the form ekcragg. As a professional I want the work I do to be easily linked back to me. I think I’m pretty good at monitoring what I publish about myself online and therefore I’m not worried about potential employers/colleagues being able to find me online.

Photograph
I use a range of photos on the different accounts I have. I change my photo quite often but it’s always one of me so that I could be easily recognised in real life. My hair is the key to my identity, as those who followed #quiffcomp will attest, and so I try to choose photos that show this feature.

Professional/personal identity
I’ve written a blog post on this topic fairly recently. In my online networks I find that I’m drawn to people more if they present an all-round image of themselves. In my professional networks I want to see that the people I interact with have got personalities and interests outside of libraries and that’s something I try to create through my own profiles too.

Visual brand
When thinking about the visual element of my identity I try to keep things pretty clean and bright. I’m a simple being and I try to reflect this in the designs I use. In terms of imagery I tend to gravitate towards type and/or representations of anything digital (to link with the title of my blog).

“The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.”
– Marshall McLuhan

When it comes to the vanity search I have seen a lot of comments from fellow participants lamenting how their common names disrupt what information can be found about them on the web.

I’m lucky that there don’t appear to be too many other Emma Craggs, and those that are out there don’t have much of a connected online identity. This means that when I searched for myself on Google I got a set of results where my accounts on LinkedIn and Twitter, plus this blog appear in the top 5 results. Further down are a couple of articles I’ve written and my contact details on my institution’s website. Interestingly, there are slight differences when you search google.com rather than google.co.uk. The only erroneous link is to a random tween’s account on Facebook.

For thing 2 I looked at a handful of blogs from the list of participants on Delicious. How did I choose which blogs from the many to go to? Well, it’s all in the name for me. I did however try not to go to too many UK blogs, as I see the global reach of this programme a great benefit. I also tried not to pick too many academic librarians.

Of the 20 or so blogs I looked at I commented on four and I will be subscribing to their RSS feeds to follow their progress through the programme. They are:

• Info Glut
• Lib Gloss
• Miss Scarlet in the Library
• Odd Librarian Out

And finally, I will leave you with a picture that sums up exactly how I feel about comments:

by miss miah

Over the next few months I will be participating in the CPD23 programme, 23 Things for Professional Development. Whilst the tasks that I complete as part of this will form the bulk of content on this blog over the summer I will also try to post additional stuff too. I did consider setting up a separate blog but as I use this blog as a reflection tool for my CPD already it seemed foolish to separate the two.

This is the third time I will be taking part in a 23 things programme, but this time there are some key differences…

by  familymwr

Firstly, I am in no way involved in running it. Which is great! My two previous experiences of the programme have been as a member of the team delivering the programme so I’m really looking forward to taking part solely as a participant.

Secondly, the content and themes covered in this programme have a different focus. Both Ox23 and UoW23 were about introducing the participants to social media sites, showing their relevance to libraries and how they can be used by librarians. While CPD23 covers some of those topics, blogging and current awareness for example, it goes broader than that. It also looks at creating a personal brand, networking offline (as well as on), opportunities for training, and advocacy.

So that’s me and thing 1 done.

This time last year I was working at the Sainsbury Library at the University of Oxford and was preparing for the launch of Oxford’s 23 Things programme.

Right now I am experiencing a great sense of déjà vu.

I work at the University of Warwick Library and earlier this week we launched 23 Things Warwick.

  by  define23 

At Oxford I was a member of the team running the programme, led by the inspiring Laura Wilkinson. For Warwick’s programme, as I have past experience, I have stepped into the role of team leader. We have revamped the programme a little bringing stuff in – EndNote, Zotero and Doodle – and taking stuff out – Delicious and Wikipedia. We’ve also shuffled some stuff around – the main move was to bring blogging and Twitter forward.

As well as running the programme I will be taking part again. I don’t want to clog up this blog with a re-run of my previous 23 Things posts so I have created a separate blog, dipping my toes in the muddy world of Blogger.

So far we have 20 participants registered on the programme. Their blogs are listed on the team blog and I have created a Google Reader bundle of their RSS feeds. I will update both lists as more people register. Please do follow along if you’re interested. I’m sure the participants would welcome your comments and encouragement on their blogs.

• Thing 23: Summarise your thoughts on the 23 Things programme

As one of the organisers of Oxford’s 23 Things programme I have had a very different experience from the majority of participants. For most this programme has only been running for 12 weeks but for us it started in November with the initial planning stages. The then Deputy Manager of Staff Development, Laura Wilkinson, was the mastermind behind the programme. She did the majority of the work planning the logistics of the programme and then the topics were split between the 23 Things Team (5 of us in total), each member taking responsibility for planning and writing the tasks for that theme. My two topics were RSS feeds (week 3, things 5 & 6) and Twitter (week 8, things 15 & 16).

As a participant in the programme I must admit that there was little that I had not experimented with before in some way, the only exception I think was Picnik. My aim with the programme was to try and find new aspects of old tools to explore. In most cases I think I have achieved this, for example I am now using my Delicious network, I have edited a page on Wikipedia and subscribed to some channels on YouTube.

What I have enjoyed most about the programme is seeing a community form within the Bodleian Libraries (formerly Oxford University Library Service). Everywhere I’ve been over the past few months there has been a buzz about 23 Things. This has really come out in the participants’ blog posts too where people have written about their conversations in the staff room and how they have helped or received help from other participants.

The element of the programme that I think has worked the best is the participants’ blogs. All participants have been keeping a record of their progress through their blog and it has been really interesting following this. I have been so pleased to see so many people expressing their love of blogging and seeing people develop their voice over the past 12 weeks. I’m looking forward to reading the updates from those participants who choose to continue blogging now that the programme is over.

Well, I guess that’s it. I’m off to register completion and think about what the hell I’m going to blog about now that 23 Things is over!