Sue Waters

Oops, Sean O’Driscoll had planned to blog about the article by the Economist that discusses the increase in networking and decline in visits to sex sites and suggests that I am tag drafting his del.icio.us account. Well I wasn’t, but I am now, instead I was drafting his blog.

For my presentation for Learnscope e-learning project planning day I expanded on Sean O’Driscoll idea of effective tag drafting.

Sean’s explanation of tag drafting relates back to the concept used in competitive cycling and motor racing where you get in behind the leader and use their slipstream to significantly reduce the average energy expenditure required to maintain a certain speed. He mainly uses the term to refer to how you monitor the websites a person (who you know is a really good tagger and tags on topics you care about) bookmarks in del.icio.us. By doing this you reduce the energy and time spent searching for the information because the leader is doing most of the work and you are just travelling in their slipstream.

My expanded version relates to locating the leader’s in the topics that you are interested in and monitoring their sites (e.g. blogs, wikis, podcasts, flickr, del.icio.us). Benefits include:

1. The noise (the fact that they are all starting to discussing a particular topic) that starts spreading out from experience e-learning people’s blogs tells you if something is worth checking out
2. Using their bookmarks in del.icio.us reduces your time locating the articles
3. Help keep your knowledge current
4. Provides opportunities for you to networking with them to exchange thoughts and ideas – the more people you network with the greater the gain for all involved

My expanded version relates to effective use of RSS feeds (maybe RSS drafting would be a better term); by using feeds properly the information comes directly to you and there is no need to continuously revisit each website to obtain the updated information. I do this by identifying the individuals who I wish to draft (i.e. follow in their slipstream) and then subscribe to their feeds using Google Reader which feeds onto my personalised Google Homepage (along with news feeds). If you are not sure of who to add I suggest you have a look at some of the articles in my shared items Google Reader in my side menu as you might identify people you would like to draft. For more information on how I RSS draft check out manage your World online.

Final chuckle – Sean commented in his interview for SolShare that knowing others are checking out what you are bookmarking in del.icio.us can put pressure on you to only bookmark really good articles. My girlfriend Evil Sue, put me onto extisp.icio.us which is cool software for giving you an image of what a person is bookmarking in del.icio.us. I use the extisp.icio.us text. It is amazing what you learn about a person from their bookmarks (Sean – you obviously like BBQing).