image credit: http://j.mp/XFQ1PS

Zounds! What a menacing title, you might think. Yes, I am fishing for effects and the word “Heroin” always appears to do the job. And so does “Fuck”, “Motherfucker”, “Fuck you!” and “Fuck it!”. “Cunt” isn’t bad neither.

As a freethinking European I find it amusing when you desperately hide these words behind tiny asterisks like “F*ck” or suggestive ellipses like “F…”. Come on, prude people, get a life! None of you has a problem spelling the word “kill”, do you? Fucking is pure pleasure, killing is not. What’s wrong with you people?

Admittedly, fucking is not the topic of this post, but after the highly screened and politically correct ebaytechblog post, I am gasping for some “political incorrectness”-air. So - if you allow me - fuck you all!

The topic is Twitter and its importance to the context-driven community. As I see it there is the twin fix of Twitter and Skype that do the job. They both keep the network connections alive. Twitter plays an important role in the dog-sniffing activities of the people in the context-driven world. Some friendly hellos, fervent fights about semantics and an abundance of pleasurable disputes and useful links.

Whenever there is a need to either take the discussion offline or elaborate on something more in-depth, Skype is the tool of choice. I have had many good discussions both on Twitter and Skype. All good so far.

Only that there is a problem here: Twitter is a terrible attention grabber and temporarily transforms - well, I don’t know about you, but it certainly does it to me - people into ADHD victims. In the course of a day there are countless checks on new tweets and there always is a strong urge to engage in discussions.

That is not very good when you should work on longer term projects, such as preparation of a conference presentation. One’s own vainness is also in the way of many things. It is flattering if your tweets are re-tweeted or favored by your followers.

I did an experiment today. My thought was: What kind of tweet would generate the most re-tweets? It certainly had to be crispy and short, unexpected, funny and unusual. This is the tweet I came up with:

QA = Questioning Assumptions

It produced a good number of re-tweets and marks as favorites. But why would this be important? I don’t know.

Still, Twitter plays an important role in maintaining the relationships between the context-driven testers. It is just a great experience to meet some of my Twitter friends physically at conferences. It is like meeting old friends you have never met before.

Semantical discussions on Twitter tend to generate a common view on the meaning of things. Twitter has a tremendous power to make thinking better and have people experience deep learning.

The one thing I have not yet figured out is how to actually handle Twitter in order for it to not rob a significant share of my time. I’d be very much interested in how you keep the balance of sanity.

Truthfully yours,
Ilari

tags: twitter, education, networking