Digital Housework

"No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again. Sometimes I just want it to stay saved, y'know, for a little bit. I fee like the maid: 'I just cleaned up this mess! Can we keep it clean for ten minutes? Please?' " - Mr. Incredible starting at 0:55 in this clip from The Incredibles

I can't keep entropy at bay. The tendency toward randomness and disorder keeps creeping back in. Today I'm dealing with the equivalent of that mountain of laundry that needs to be done. Or more aptly, the garage you need to clean that holds all the boxes you've moved from place to place without ever opening and sorting them. Today, I'm cleaning up digital files.

In How to Do Nothing Jenny O'Dell wrote about the attention economy's logic "that 'disruption' is more productive than the work of maintenance--of keeping ourselves and others alive and well." She wasn't referring to digital maintenance--if I really do what she calls for I'd have a lot less to maintain--but her point still applies.

It's so much more exciting to start something new than to clean up something old, right? To heck with Marie Kondo; in a consumer economy the thrill of buying a new set of shelves far outweighs the tedium of sorting the things we'll set on them and making a run to donate the items we no longer need or want, let alone dusting those shelves in a couple of weeks after they're no longer new and exciting. In the digital context it's more fun to take today's pictures than to review yesterday's pictures, delete the ones we don't want, and organize them in some useful way.

I appreciate and am inspired by O'Dell's deep thinking about the ways in which we have given away our ability to pay attention, to concentrate, to notice what really matters. We are creating enormous economic value for nothing, doing unpaid digital labor that Facebook or Twitter or Google Ad Services monetizes and sells to shareholders. If we are to extract any true value for ourselves, we're going to have to give some thought to maintenance, not just creation.

I have the digital footprint (and attention span) of an early adopter of some, but not all, of the many shiny-object services of the digital age. I've been on Twitter for over a decade, Facebook about that long. I got interviewed as an early user of LinkedIn in my former hometown because I had so many connections before others were using it regularly. I let a TV station follow me around when I was checking in on Foursquare when that was still a thing. I have an Instagram account I never post to and no doubt dozens of dusty spaces on the web with my name on them created for some forgotten reason. When I changed jobs I had to do at least 59 things to deal with my online presence.

There's no way I can track down and delete all these things I'm not maintaining. I do wonder at times about the amount of server space being held for neglected accounts. How long do you suppose my old "burner" email accounts will be available?

I'm not even going to try to find and delete everything I don't use. I'm going to start by cleaning up what I do use. I'll try to define some rules for what I do and don't save that may make maintenance easier going forward.

Take Dropbox, for example. Handy utility. I have that and Google Drive and wherever the images go that are all automatically saved by my cellular service. How much cloud storage does one person need? Not as much as I have access to. Yet I managed to fill the free Dropbox space and start paying for more a few years ago when I was taking lots of pictures in my work as executive director of Washington Bikes. Every bike ride, ribbon-cutting, Bike to Work Day Energizer Station got captured with multiple images.

And they're all still sitting there.

I keep meaning to go in and clean up. Every time I start, I get a few images deleted, then get side-tracked into thinking about whether I want to save some, renaming a few so they have a more meaningful filename than the date they were taken, opening several to determine which one is the best in a series (and I'm no photographer so none of these are very good to begin with), thinking about whether someday I may want to be able to illustrate this particular historic moment for some reason and no one else has any pictures of this, and and and.... You can understand why my Dropbox is so full it will no longer sync across devices and they want me to pay more to get more storage space.

No. It's maintenance time. By which I primarily mean, be bold and hit DELETE, at least on some of those folders.

Like housework in the real world AFK (Away From Keyboard), this may not stay done. The dust bunnies will creep back in. I'll lose track of my good intentions about not saving everything as files when I could simply bookmark a report I want to refer to.

(Oh no, my bookmarks--those need organizing and clean-up too. Or maybe not. My maintenance energy only extends so far and I need to prioritize. Focus, Chamberlain, focus.)

A while back thanks to Twitter, which I do find valuable as a place to give and receive information from people who are still better value filters than a Google search, I encountered The Maintainers, "a global research network interested in the concepts of maintenance, infrastructure, repair, and the myriad forms of labor and expertise that sustain our human-built world."

Working in transportation as I do, I know our maintenance backlog is enormous and still growing. The belief that something new is more important than taking care of what we have is evident there as in other sectors of public policy and our economic structures. Lack of maintenance carries a hidden cost to all of us, from repairs to personal vehicles shaken by rough roads and potholes to the broken elbow I received crashing on a trail thanks to a broken surface I tried to avoid on my bike.

One of the costs of failure to maintain my digital space is direct: I'll be charged another year's storage on Dropbox if I don't get my usage down. Another is indirect; if I try to find something in those files I'm digging through all the clutter, just like going through boxes in my garage in search of a specific item time after time.

Maintenance protects, sustains and adds real value in the real world. We need more of it. It may not be shiny, but it's essential.

And here I sit, writing a shiny new blog post instead of digging into those dusty old cloud files.

Social media: Drinking from the firehose, being the ocean

Over a year ago I read three questions from @RickButts on Twitter. To experience them the way I did, scrolling back through a few pages of tweets that came up while I was catching up on blog posts in my Google Reader feeds, you have to see them in reverse order, last one first:

• Do we REALLY need all the new resources that provide useful information - when it comes as interruption to our goals?
• By this I mean higher thinking vs over-focusing on trivial to useless information?
• Do you think reading Twitter stream every day makes you smarter or dumber?

The same day, I read a blog post from Zen Habits on the six gifts we can give our loved ones of presence, love, compassion, voice, healthy lifestyle, and belief in them (don’t just read the list of words here—go read the post. Just don’t forget to come back).

The combination of these two inputs made me think about the amount and type of input I receive—and what my output looks like.


Am I present in these spaces, as well as for my family? If not, I shouldn’t waste my time and yours. But it’s really, really tough to be present—in the sense of being mindful and aware—in the online medium that invites you every nano-second to click away to another bright, shiny new toy.

You only learn social media by doing: reading and commenting on blog posts, setting up a Facebook page and finding friends, starting a blog (which I did with no clear idea of its voice or purpose—definitely something to do differently the next time), creating a Twitter account/finding people to follow/attracting followers.

This is professional development for me, keeping up on the latest communication tools. Doing all this as an individual let me learn before applying the lessons to my institution so the mistakes are in my name, not theirs.

Drinking from a firehose is time-consuming. There’s just no way to accomplish this in a standard 40-hour work week; I spend plenty of late nights and weekends. As I noted a year ago, I tend to take on an overload when I plunge into something anyway.

I’ve brought that same intensity to my social media explorations. I didn’t just focus on the main channel, whatever that might be—Facebook? Blog? Twitter? I checked out all the tributaries with the same gusto. Or, you might say, I flitted like a hummingbird from flower to flower, sipping sipping sipping (although the attraction to shiny new objects makes me more magpie than hummingbird).

The learning experience has been great. I’ve used the lessons for work—we won an award for my use of the Twitter account @WSUSpokane as an identity-building tool and I was named a Senior Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research. I’ve also built some online presence for the volunteer organizations I love like Bike to Work Spokane. I became an invited blogger—love the sound of that—on Cycling Spokane. I now speak regularly at local and regional conferences on Twitter and other uses of social media. I even got interviewed on Gov 2.0 radio.

In the year since I read those tweets and that post, the reasons to be thoughtful about inputs and outputs have only increased. 

• I’ve subscribed to and unsubscribed from quite a few blogs, seeking the right mix of creative inspiration, fresh insights, and a manageable Google Reader queue. 
• I’ve scrubbed the list of people I follow on Twitter several times and finally instituted a comprehensive use of lists to help me remember why I wanted to follow a particular account in the first place. (I don't use utilities like Tweetdeck to organize--I prefer to view Twitter as a river flowing by and sip from the stream as I have time.)
• I keep making another run at using LinkedIn more effectively to find resources and connect with people—I know it has value I haven’t found because I haven’t put in the time. 
• One of these days maybe I’ll really start utilizing LaunchPadINW, the local social network.

What I’m trying to do in all these spaces is be more thoughtful about whether I’m truly adding value when I tweet or post versus just distributing random mist. A sense that I’m adding value will keep the firehose manageable for me.

Mindfulness is the secret. The tweets that just pop out like a flood—say, when I’m live-tweeting a conference—aren’t mindful ones. If I’m making a conscious decision about whether or not to subscribe, follow or tweet, it will mean I’m aware and present in the moment. That will slow me down.

This question of value will continue to grow in importance for all of us as the volume just continues to increase. Otherwise how will our little drops of water jump out above the torrent and get noticed?

Bearing in mind, that is, that our sense of being separate droplets is an illusion. We’re all the ocean.

• Deep thoughts on attention as a scarce resource by Daniel Tunkelang

Tweeting, Twittering, Friending, Following: My Connection Policies & Practices

If you’re here, it’s because you followed a link from one of my profile pages (or for some strange reason you actually read my personal blog—I needed a place to park this). I will keep revising this as I think of new points and as policies change.

I’m on several social networks and use slightly different policies for deciding who I connect with in each. This will explain why I did or didn’t accept your request, follow you back, friend you, or whatever verb you’re expecting, and what kind of content you’re likely to see from me in that space.

Twitter: If you follow me, I look at your profile. Reasons I won’t follow you back include seeing any or all of the following, which are just my preferences (so it's not you, it's me):

• No bio.
• No tweets.
• Tweets that reflect only a desire to sell me something that doesn’t interest me.
• Most of your tweets tell me what you're doing moment to moment, including when you get up in the morning, what you had for breakfast/lunch/dinner, and when you went to bed. A few of these, sure--I do a few myself. Blow-by-blow daily itineraries--not so much.
• You don't appear to share much in the way of information or resources. If I had my way, the Twitter prompt would read, "What are you sharing?" I'm more apt to follow someone when a certain percentage of tweets contains something interesting-looking: a blog, a news item, a site that does something cool, fun, or useful.
• Page after page of @ messages without general tweets to all. I appreciate a mix of @ conversations and general "y'all come!" comments and questions--goes along with the sharing mentality I appreciate. If all your tweets are interactions with individuals, I don't feel as welcome, somehow.
• No @ messages at all. So you're not in any direct conversations at all; you're broadcasting.
• No interests in common from my perspective. You may be interested in some topic(s) that I tweet about, while the reverse may not be true. I’m not looking to build a huge following, and if you unfollow me it’s no big deal—you’re just changing the channel.

If you choose to follow me, I really appreciate it if you send me an @ message to tell me why, or what interests you in my tweetstream. I do that for people I follow to establish an initial connection.

Why I’m on Twitter: For me, the point of Twitter is learning and conversing. I typically follow people with interest or expertise in the same things I tweet about: social media, communications, PR, higher education, bike commuting, active transportation, public policy, government, urban planning, health care, environment, the nonprofit sector, and my geographic region of Spokane/Inland Northwest.

Twitter accounts I manage: @Bike2WrkSpokane, @WSUSpokane, @FriendsofFalls.

Facebook: This is the most “closed” of my social network spaces. If you send me a friend request, I will only accept it if I know you personally. Even if we have common interests, or have a connection through a project I’m involved with such as Bike to Work Spokane, that doesn’t mean I’ll friend you.

My status updates there are fairly personal: what I’m up to, what the family’s doing, my latest blog post, with a little work stuff mixed in. I also manage the WSU Spokane page, and hope you’ll be a fan if it interests you.

LinkedIn: I will accept an invitation to connect if we have had enough interaction that I feel I know you professionally or personally. This could be direct personal contact, or through the medium of discussions on Twitter or via email that have given me some understanding of who you are.

LaunchPadINW: I’m actually still figuring this one out. I am somewhat reluctant to “friend” someone I haven’t met who actually lives in my town. For now, I’m using my Facebook policy, so I have to know you in the real world before I’ll accept your invitation on LaunchPad.

The rest of the world, outside social networks: My email is widely available, so if you want to establish a connection get in touch with me at work.

Better yet, jump into a cause that we both care about--I'm always recruiting for volunteers!

• Citizens for Spokane Schools: Election Day is March 10, 2009, for a renewal of the levy and bond funding essential to Spokane Public Schools.
• Friends of the Falls: We work to engage people directly with the Great Spokane River Gorge so they learn to love our river and work to keep it clean and accessible for generations to come. We should be constructing our whitewater feature in 2009, and your membership dollars will help us keep working on projects in the Strategic Master Plan for the gorge.
• Bike to Work Spokane: We work to promote commuting and community for Spokane cyclists. We partner with the SpokeFest Association, Bicycle Alliance of Washington, and the Spokane Bicycle Advisory Board to educate, encourage, and support bike commuters and the drivers who interact with them.

I’m always happy to build new relationships in the actual real world where we have faces, voices—you know, all three dimensions, or better yet four (being acquainted over time) :D.