Task 1b: Professional Communication Technologies

Looking at others Blogs and before reading the reader, I kept seeing lots starting with “Web 2.0” and confused on what it actually is? I thought it might be like the new IOS 7 software on my iphone and I would have to update it on the computer? Whilst reading the Reader I was very surprised when I realised I use “Web 2.0” all of the time. I started about 9 years ago when my friend at school helped me set up my first “Bebo” account. I use to write blogs, comment on friends and share photos (yes and even a few selfies if I remember to get the best profile pic!) and also to share videos, music etc.

Nowadays most people people use social media it’s amazing the way things have rapidly developed over the last few years, I feel like social media sites were aimed towards young people and now even my Nan has Facebook! I still need to help her with a profile pic though as its just blank at the moment! (Maybe I should give her some selfie tips?!)

This led me to think how my young cousins aged from 7/8 years now have ipads, smartphone’s even laptops and are glued to them. When I was younger I would be out and about physically dancing or doing sporting activities at their ages.

This PowerPoint presentation really helps see the global scale of the Internet and social media (January 2014)

http://www.slideshare.net/wearesocialsg/social-digital-mobile-around-the-world-january-2014#<http://www.slideshare.net/wearesocialsg/social-digital-mobile-around-the-world-january-2014>

I find it’s a good way to visually see the scale of the Internet from country to country, one thing that stood out to me was that ‘on average we spend 2 hours per day on social media’ I find using social media site Facebook is now a key way of keeping in contact with friends all over the world, in different time frames but personally I would like to meet with friends face to face in town and have a good catch up over cake and coffee.

I do love social media though and think they are very good tools to use in the professional world. Most websites you look at now will use them, currently we are setting up a Facebook/ Twitter page to spread the word of the Matthew Bourne Lord of the Flies project, I am working on across South Wales. I feel this will be a key way to notify people that workshops are happening; we also have video links for people interested to visually see what they could be involved in. This is also free publicity and we hope this will be a good way to receive applications. At the moment we have 10 workshops set up across Wales and hope to have 40 participants per session, so we really need to advertise well! I will keep you posted on how we do!