Antony Mayfield gave an excellent presentation about being social at this months Digital Surrey networking event hosted by Farnham Art College. He is listening to a question in the above pic (apologies for quality as he was in a dark corner). I read his book months ago and so was quite excited to hear from the man himself.

One of the points he made was that as humans we are social and that the web is an ultrasocial space. Using the tools for this space (such as Twitter) takes time to learn and understand. He mentioned 40 hours, similar to learning to drive or learning an instrument. He was clear about the web being a space that exists in the world, rather than we exist in the web and it’s a tool for being social. Social is what it means to be human.

He went on to discuss the 9 rules in book. 1. Check your Google shadow regularly.  2. Be the first/best source of information about yourself.  3. Understand networks and which ones are important to you.  4. Be present in your networks.  5.Be useful.  6. Draw a line between private and public.  7. Remember that you are always on the record.  8. Get a thicker skin.  9. Don’t think of the web as another world. I don’t want to enlarge upon these 9 points (they are downloadable from his site as a book sample anyway) as this site is about images more than words.

However, I would encourage you to get the book, it changed my online world, it’s why I now blog rather than just have a static site and why I am learning to use Twitter, etc. I’m working my way thru the rest of his recommendations, bit by bit as I find the time, watch this space for how I do.