Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts

Sometimes mistakes can make us grow.  A week or so ago I goofed in responding to a fellow friend’s rant on a listserv—he just made a statement that it was time to move to a better forum than a list for some of our conversations—but me in all my Einstein thinking, decided to tease him in a good natured way, and OMG did I ever stick my foot in my mouth.

Multitasking means you do several things with a fraction of the necessary attention–and everything suffers.

You see I was multi-tasking.  My friend always makes me laugh so I made a sarcastic remark—my quote, I thought to JUST him:

Hee hee heee waiting for the list lovers’ rants to commence!!

OMG DId I just do that?

To say that I was deeply mortified at my faux pas is an understatement.  And then yes, I did what everyone should NOT—I sent a quiet apology to the list.  One friend told me if I hadn’t apologized she would have never known it wasn’t intended for everyone. Sigh.  I take my snarky remark as a sign too that I’ve outgrown using listservs as well.  Oh and that I shouldn’t multitask.

Duck and cover, no?

This time though, instead of a few expected angry responses, suddenly there were many asking questions. Some colleagues were interested in what I thought a better solution would be—a Ning.  So an idea took root and began to grow quickly in popularity.  Next thing I know there was a volunteer to create it (I wasn’t about to do this—afterall, I had just dissed the entire list, calling the most loyal and devoted list users…well… I just don’t want to even remember it again. Suffice it to say in my heart I know I was less than nice. So I was laying LOW.) Then we had to come up with a name, and I suggested we ask for names to be nominated from the list and then use a polling software to decide—my thoughts here were that those most devoted to using the listserv would buy in to moving some of the conversations over to a Ning if provided a way have some ownership in it.

From the fallout comes something good, new

So the Scasl Ning was born, a place for South Carolina LMS’s to network, share, discuss, learn, and grow.  26 hours after it was launched and announced, we had over 100 members joining and checking it out.  And I just kind of laid low, working the background, answering questions to the informational technology committee (no, they didn’t kick me out, even though they probably should have), offering suggestions in how to launch it, manage it, and make it successful. But I stayed out of the spotlight.  I’m still feeling a tad “burned” by my unprofessional list wide response.  MyScasl.Ning.com (that has such a nice ring to it!) seems to be really impressing some. And that was not even my top choice. Here’s the best comment left on my wall, and lets me know I’m close to being out of the doghouse:

At 4:31pm on December 10, 2008, Brenda B. said…
Cathy, this is such a fantastic idea – I’ve networked more in the past two days with other SC lms than I have since SCASL conference.

Don’t farmers use poop to fertilize?

So now in reflection, I can say that something good did come out of my goof up. I’m good for sticking my foot in my mouth oh once a month or so.  I’m just happy to report that this goof-up seems to have resulted in a change that was needed.  And best of all, the loyal list users have no worries yet about it going away, the MyScasl Ning has been quite the conversation there lately too—making all (hopefully) forget about my stupid remark. That dumb comment wound up being just the catalyst we needed. Time will tell if this freshly rooted network will survive and grow.

…and hopefully, lesson learned here.

Attribution:

Tags: Listserv, Ning, SCASL, South Carolina