How do you manage your relationship with social media AND the real people in your life?
I was looking at old pics, like the one above from my wedding in 2003, and was started wondering: How many Twitpics would I have sent from the limo. Would I have updated my Facebook relationship status to “married” from the receiving line? If my wedding had a hashtag, what would it be? #rupegetshitched? Then I realized I had a problem. I use social media, among many other things, in my current job with the District of Columbia, but I also live that public lifestyle – tweets, Foursquare check-ins, uploads to Flickr (And now my wife is battling me to be “Mayor” of the our neighborhood park BTW).
But where do we draw the line between spending quality time and spending quality time online? I was reading a great new post from Steve Radick titled “Who’s Making You Successful” which immediately made me think of friend Adriel Hampton who pops in and out of most people’s Twitter stream in this Gov 2.0 space. Who makes him successful? I told him last night that I am sure his wife is a hero. He is online around the clock – radio, chats, blogging – he has been suspected of being a robot (rumor is he is “Cylon”).
And then I thought of my poor wife who sometimes is awaken by the glow of my iPhone as I answer customer questions or type out a quick comment to a blog post.
Many of us have small teams of folks and wear many, many hats. Gov 2.0 has set a rapid pace and now that customers have the access, they demand more and more. Bad thing? No. It’s a very good thing that allows us all to tell our stories, highlight our work and listen to problems and concerns from “the crowd” to make things better. But we do check Twitter on the Metro, read through blog comments in our cars, adjust code in restaurants and study analytics in bed. Our new jobs demand it.
But I am curious, are the single and the childless more equipped to succeed in this space? If you are married and/or have children, how do you separate time for both? Or have you found a way to manage? Do you have a system or schedule?
I will be sure to thank my wife for her support as we’ll undoubtedly find ourselves Facebook chatting from across the house tonight.
Would love to talk about this and more tonight on #localgovchat at 9 EST.
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