Photo by Linnea Sandbakk available on Unsplash
I’ve been thinking for a while about blogging about my work, tweeting about what I do at work, and how much I should share or what people would be interested in. I think it’s probably something that a lot of people think/worry about – how much should I share? Is this private/confidential? What if it’s critical about something at work – should I mention the things that I’m not entirely comfortable with or that I think should be changed? But to balance all these (legitimate) concerns, it’s also really valuable to share your work and what you’re doing with folk, to generate other ideas and discuss your thinking with a wider community. I suppose maybe some of my more recent posts (like this one about Design Thinking and live-tweeting – which was for a workshop at work) fall into this category of sharing my work.
And then I came across this tweet:
And was introduced to the concept of Working Out Loud – see more of what it is in this graph here, and read this introductory blog post:
So basically, my understanding of it was that it was similar to what I was doing already, tweeting about what I was doing at work, thoughts about issues, articles, people that inspired me, blogging about those things, but being even more intentional about it – inviting others to contribute their opinions, organizing it in a way that is useful to others and to yourself, and maybe even taking it a bit further and setting up a WOL group of peer support, in your workplace or wider.
So what do you think about the concept? Do you already ‘work out loud’? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
The Octopus Librarian 
Coming back to read this one again later and follow up the links. Thanks, Abigail. Just as well #blogjune only comes around once a year — I’m got 11 months’ worth of reading put aside from this one !! : )
No problem – glad I’m providing some food for thought. And I am totally going to go back and read some more posts and think about it š sooooo much good stuff in one month!
I’ve heard about WOL but never followed up on it. Your post makes it sound interesting. I think I’d use Yammer better if I thought about it in this context. Thanks for sharing
Thanks – Yammer is one tool I’ve used on and off; not many folk at work seem to actively post but I wonder how many are lurking and still get the emails notifying of new content? Maybe I should give it a whirl š
I’m lucky. The head of all our admin services is active on Yammer so lots of people follow to keep up to date with what he is putting out there. Plus post our restructure Yammer is a brilliant tool for throwing out a question and get directed to the right area fast
I was wondering if you have heard of/tried anything like a ‘smartpen’ that records audio as you write/draw, so that you can read your notes back with the accompanying audio. We recently purchased one for a student with learning difficulties and we all want to play with it.
Wow – that sounds awesome! No – I’ve never tried a smart pen, but I would love to š You probably know more than I do about the topic though š
I only know what was on the video on their website. Have just heard we are still trying to get it to hold its charge. š¦