[Air-L] Pronetos: The Social Network For Scholars

[Emma Duke-Williams]

On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 5:26 PM, Gerry Mckiernan <gerrymck at iastate.edu> wrote:

> Pronetos is home to communities of every academic discipline - a global think-tank of the leaders in every field. Pronetos makes it easy for scholars to stay connected with thier colleagues, wherever they may be. Pronetos is a place for scholars to network, and build and share ideas with the greatest minds in their field

I've just had a look at their site & they're claiming to have 335
members. It's reminded me that I joined something else a while ago,
set up, I think, by Nature - which is aimed at "scientists". I've also
joined a few educators social networks - but the only one that I'm
active in is Eduspaces (despite all rocky times its had since December
- now, hopefully sorted out)

I've also had invitations to assorted networking tools - how do people
decide which to join, and which to particpate in? And what about the
sort of site I tend to view FAcebook as - the "blackhole" type - which
makes it much easier to bring in external information than it does to
let out information to someone on another network.

I'm sure that there is some research done on it, but for now I'm more
interested in anecdotes - just what's made you decide to join what
you've joined, to continue & to not bother.

For me:
Eduspaces - I like the software ; and most users are (or were at the
time, not quite so much now) Educational technologists or related.
There are quite a few people on it who I know anyway & others I've met
since.

Facebook. I really don't like it; but I've got quite a few people I
know who do, and due to it's blackholeness, I find I have to join to
keep up with them. As I'm interested in student use of Social
Networking, I kind of have to be there! I tend not, however, to join
things - especially if I have a feeling that someone has invited me
without really knowing whether or not I'm likely to want to join it.
I'd rather join communities there that seem interesting to me.

Ning.
I've joined a few communities, but haven't been there for ages; mostly
because in many ways it's even more blackholey than Facebook. I have
to login for every community - I can't have a picture of everything I
do - never mind following friends across communities.  (unless they've
changed, it's a while since I've been there) Of course, that could be
useful if you like to keep work/ social communities etc., separate.
(Which I do; but tend to do it by having most of my social activities
either via email lists, or off line)

Sorry for a longish email! It's what happens when you have a cold &
haven't gone away this weekend - & there's rubbish on TV!
-- 
Emma Duke-Williams:
School of Computing/ Faculty eLearning Co-ordinator.
Blog: http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/