Like everybody else, I am often overwhelmed by new technologies like social media. I have little patience for people who dismiss information technology as frivolous and useless toys. My Ipad is no toy. It helps me to do my work every day of my life.
This attitude is boring. I have to laugh when people say they don’t need to find their friends. That, to me, is utter cluelessness, the reflexive hiding of people who are afraid to change. It’s a perfectly valid choice to avoid this stuff – it is expensive, obsessive and difficult – but it can be life and death for people like me.
Technology like social media are much more than toys. Facebook is the most powerful, transformative and connective technology I have ever seen, and writers like me need to understand it, and if they choose, use it. It is no longer an option for me, but an indispensable way for me to survive and evolve as a writer. In recent weeks, I did a smart thing. I hired a social media coach, Sara Friedman, from Socialmomentum. She has been almost shockingly helpful and useful to me, sparking my overdue move to video and helping me understand some of the many tools social media has given me to connect with, understand and increase my readership.
Writers and artists can no longer live in indulgent retreats and hide behind seminars and the notion that they are apart from the working world. The subsidized world has vanished. My work is a business. And like everyone else I spent a lot of frustrating time with passwords, confusing directions, outrageously inept Customer Service and Tech Support and cables, batteries and commands. Hiring Sara changed much of this. She has helped me learn video (tomorrow I begin lessons with Dave Biger Productions in Saratoga Springs), edit in Imovie, create photo albums on Facebook, and is helping me archive my photographs and store them on the Web, where they will be safe and accessible. These are things I once thought I could never learn, and am now using almost every day to present my stories and advance my work.
Sara is helping non-profits and is now branching out to coach people and families. I love the idea of the technology coach. It is long overdue. In a world where Customer Service doesn’t service and Tech Support doesn’t support, there has long been an immense vacuum for people struggling to handle a wave of technological change. What kind of equipment do I need? How can non-profits spread their message and raise money? How can I make good choices? Understand how they work? What’s good for my family? How much money do I need to spend?
Like Facebook, the Internet was once scoffed at by people saying it was a fad and they preferred to remain disconnected. Some technologies come and go. Some transform us, and we can squawk about them all we want, but those of us who live and work in the world need to use them. To me, it is long past being a choice. I am grateful for my technology coach. Get yourself one.