So who is this guy who keeps harping on about the use of Social Media in the public sector?
Well I have worked in the UK public sector for over 30 years, including higher education, councils, the health service and government agencies. I started my working life as an archaeozoologist (that's someone who identifies and analyses the bones that come from archaeological sites) - one of the more exciting sites I worked on (a cave in the Mendip Hills in Somerset) can be seen here.
In the early days of personal computers (anyone remember CPM and dual floppy drive machines with no hard disk?) I got interested because of their potential application for bones analysis (I even wrote a bones analysis program in dBase called bonerec).
Eventually I decided to switch to a career in computing and moved to the NHS as an IT support technician. Those were the days of MS-DOS, SuperCalc and WordPerfect. Networking was just a dream (Novell NetWare was waiting in the wings) and GUIs comprised GEM and the early Macs. I progressed to IT management, still within the NHS, and installed my first network using NetWare 2 and coax cabling / BNC network cards. Windows 3 emerged and we set up shared calendars using Windows for Workgroups. I then stayed in IT ever since, moving first to the Equal Opportunities Commission and then into local government. Latterly I worked at Manchester Metropolitan University, retiring in 2016. In the years before I retired I majored on project management and business change where I blended IT, project management and business change.
I was also an Open University associate lecturer for many years, teaching foundation technology courses.
I wouldn't say I'm an expert on Social Media, but I've done quite a lot of reading on the subject, and have taken an active part in trying to use it effectively in my own workplace.
[Last update: 26 Feb 2020]
