Wednesday, October 10, 2007

I chatted for the first time tonight

Joe, Todd, Bonnie and I met in the Oncourse chat room to update ourselves on the Mooresville PL wiki. As expected, I’ve been nervous about making the right moves to get into the chat room, and once in, doing the right thing to converse.

Almost everything went smoothly. I found it in Oncourse under L554 in the left margin, just as Bonnie said (thanks, Bonnie). Bonnie and Todd were already in. It felt really good to see their messages welcoming me – I’d landed where I wanted to!

Joe arrived soon, and the chatting began. It’s a disjunct way to converse. It’s funny, the way our full formal names appear with every sent message: Susan Beverly Parsons, etc. I felt like I should salute. Comments popped up and made my eyes bounce. “Hurry up!” I told myself. I felt like Lucy Ricardo in that chocolate factory scene where she can’t keep up and pops the chocolates instead of packaging them.

Mid-way through the chat, I got bumped out – an “Error” message popped up. I took a breather and tried to come back in a few minutes later, and I did. I thought I’d done something wrong, but Todd said it was the software. I wish it had happened to someone else, though – then I would see that it doesn’t always happen to me.

Using technology makes my blood pressure rise, but we got things done, and it was fun. Now I have to figure out how to get an education-related and a Reader’s Advisory-related graphic onto the wiki. Forward!

2 comments:

Mary Alice Ball said...

IM makes me a little crazy. There are many other tools that I prefer. I can definitely relate to the Ethel and Lucy in the chocolate factory feeling.

Ellen said...

The disjointed nature of chatting does take some getting used to - I remember when my team used it in a class last semester to discuss a group project. I'm a fast typist, so I had to force myself to pause sometimes to let others "get a word in edgewise" so that I didn't dominate the conversation.