Spending too much time on Facebook, YouTube or Twitter?

How many times have you meant to open your web browser to check your university portal, only to accidentally drift off to Facebook? (If you’re like most people, your Facebook notifications are going to be sent to your university email – the email that verifies your University network.)

How many times have you logged into Twitter, meaning to just tweet some amazing one-liner you’ve got to share with the world, only to be distracted by the plethora of tweets in your news feed?

How many times have you jumped from YouTube video to YouTube video, wasting hours without end before realising it’s 3 AM in the morning?

Rather than try to fight the interruptions of procrastination, why not use them to your advantage? Interrupt your Facebook and Twitter news feeds by becoming a fan of, or following, the users of productive value to you. Decrease the chances of losing your focus, by throwing snippets of focus back into your news feed.

As for YouTube — try TED instead of YouTube. TED videos are perfect to watch during a meal. They make the perfect length for a meal, and even though they’re not likely to be directly productive to your current projects, they will most likely offer far better food for thought than a YouTube video ever could.

Start by making your procrastination positive today!

A few quick updates:

• Upgraded to Wordpress 2.9
• Added an Amazon aStore link
• Added a projects portal
• Spoke to some remarkable individuals from the VCE industry
• Reconsidering the direction my blog is heading

Wordpress 2.9 introduced a new bug that has forced me to take down my Twitter integration temporarily. Hopefully it will be back soon, but I think I’ll put it on the sidebar now. As a consequence, my splash bar now has an elongated Featured Project field, and I’ve replaced the Merspi logo with a sneak peek at the home page instead.

I’ve snuck in an Amazon aStore link into my sidebar, for anyone who wants to check out the books I’d recommend or like to buy. They give me commission, but I’m not really expecting to cash out from it. My primary objective is to recommend good books that I like. If you’re into books, have a look at it.

I’d actually probably recommend you to buy somewhere else if I was savvy about book purchasing, but I usually end up impulsively buying books from Borders impulsively — clearly I don’t look for the cheapest price!

You can also have a look at my projects portal, where I showcase some of the projects I’m involved in. I finally have something online about my VCE tutoring services, which I’ve often relied on word of mouth for — hence the delay in bringing this page out.

I’ve recently had the opportunity to speak with two interesting individuals in the VCE industry: Daniel Dobos and Derrick Ha, who both do completely different things, and have completely different backgrounds. My conversations with them have generated plenty of new ideas to take to the road ahead. For me, this has also been an accidental comfort zone challenge. Meeting someone I’ve never met before, and having a chat over coffee with them is something I’ve never done before.

Something that I really need to think about with my personal blog is what direction do I want to take it in? Do I want to gain readership, or do I want it to be a personal branding site for people who want to Google my name (i.e.: employers)? I think I’ve used the latter too often as an excuse for not trying to develop my readership further. I think I’d like to develop a readership, but I also understand that nobody wants to read about just my life. I need to have a think about what niche do I want to develop a relationship with, and how I can keep up to date with the content.

I’d be excited to listen to your feedback guys. Best wishes for the holiday season, and I’ll speak to you in 2010.

I have a habit of making mini-blogs that I intend to flesh out later on. For reasons beyond my understanding, most of these never come to fruition. I need to have the writer’s mood then and there in order to write a blog post fully and finish it.

Over my exam period, I had been itching to update my blog, but unfortunately I didn’t have enough time on my hands. I kept writing little drafts on the topic of “how to tell a story”. It’s something that’s been on my mind over the past month or so, as I’ve been gradually paying more attention to the art of engaging and effective communication. Needless to say, these samples suffered the same fate as my other mini-blogs did. I could never find the inspiration to pick them up again and flesh them out as intended — and they were flushed down the drain.

So now that I’m finally in holidays, with high hopes and motivations for the summer break, why not actually tell a story instead of just writing about how-to?

So without further ado, I present…

Merspi — A Social Learning Hub

On October 16, Merspi.com opened itself to the public as a social learning hub for VCE students — and has since started to develop its online community. In the past month or so, we’ve already produced over a hundred pages of community-generated content, with over 30,000 page views and a contributor base of 80 users.

Since our launch, we’ve attracted the attention of various educators and authorities, some of which have become users on the site (here and here, for example). We’ve also had the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, follow @merspi with his Twitter account. And behind the scenes, we’ve had a lot of interest from teachers and entrepreneurs in e-learning and Web 2.0 circles approach us about our idea.

Despite some friction in getting actual users and early adopters on the site, and the difficulties involved with growing a VCE community towards the end of a school year, the amount of praise and encouragement we have received from educators, entrepreneurs and even a venture capitalist or two, has been extremely rewarding so far — to say the least.

Invaluable for developing our community has been the support we’ve received from web-savvy teachers, who have added Merspi to their school’s list of useful VCE resources on their student portal. (Thanks! You know who you are!) We were even mentioned in a technology in education podcast. Thanks to all our supporters! Without your help, we wouldn’t be able to help and change the face of education in Australia — for the better.

So what’s next? We’re trying to spread the word to early adopters (students or teachers) for a surge in growth for the start of VCE in early 2010. A Merspi blog is possibly in the making, and we hope to acquire or produce a lot of education-relevant content to attract more users. We are already engaging our audience through Facebook and Twitter — the next logical step is to hit the blogosphere! So stay tuned!

To be continued…

I am a co-founder of Merspi, with extensive tutoring experience with VCE students over the past three years.