Over the last month or so, I have spent a lot of time in the year 2000 (I managed at the same time to be immersed in 1940*!). I’ve been clearing out my filing cabinets, and auditing/rewriting the Special Collections web pages before we move to the content management system this winter. I created most of the contents of cabinets and web pages between 2000-2004.
Revisiting my work from those years really brought home to me how my working practices have changed. I still spend a lot of time at my PC, but what I do there, and how I feel about it, is very different. I also do much more work at home or when mobile.
I trust our systems and servers more so I print out much less. I certainly don’t back up onto floppy disks any more! When I save onto my memory stick, it is to carry work about, not for ultimate safekeeping.
Much of my marketing, networking, and just keeping up to date has moved. I remember how much I used to enjoy writing web pages. I no longer find this deeply satisfying: it has become a chore. I get the enjoyment I used to get from playing around with html now from social media, especially twitter and my family of blogs, where I feel free to be creative. I spend a lot more time on cloud-based media, less on conventional web pages or mailing lists.
In future posts, I’ll try to tease out why I made these changes and look at what I do now with social media.
* Writing weekly Postscripts.