Social networking: When is pink not pretty?

Darren at Drape’s Takes did a really good post on remembering that it is a global community we need to avoid ego-centric references to our own particular culture. After spending quite a bit of time setting up a new wiki for my individual learnscope project I stopped and reflected only to realised that global communities…

Sue Waters

May 6, 2007

1 minute

I have received funding to do an individual project on e-learning leadership and will be using this project to enhance my leadership skills to improve sustainable uptake of m- and e-learning in my College. From my point of view encouraging people to participate and provide feedback on my information is very important; and like all my sites I am keen for people to gain from what I learn.

However because it is an individual project, and for me it is a lot more personal, I wanted my site to reflect more of who I am. For once I just want to have prettiness. No mobile gadgets (not that they are not nice) or fish; just calming place that I will want to spend time at….. and feel relaxed because for me technology is easy……researching information on leadership, coaching, mentoring, PD strategies etc is not.

After working on the site, and then looking at what I was trying to achieve, I realised that it is unlikely that men would be engaged to explore and participate in my site and that women that hate pink would also switch off. MMMmmm but it looks so pretty? Please check it out and give me your feedback……..Sue’s space on E-learning Leadership.

3 responses to “Social networking: When is pink not pretty?”

Darren Draper

May 7, 2007 at 11:37 pm

Hello again, Sue. Great blog!

I took a look at your wiki. It’s pink. My initial reaction was that it was your site, you liked the colors, and who am I to take an issue of what colors you use for your wiki?

Furthermore, if I were asked to contribute to the wiki, I don’t believe that the colors would prevent me from being fully engaged in participation. To me, the design wouldn’t affect my participation as much as the content would. Keep your content engaging, and your users will participate.

For what it’s worth,

DD

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Graham Wegner

May 9, 2007 at 11:52 am

Ooooh, pink. No way, no self respecting Australian male is going to look at a pink site – unless the content is really good like about beer or footy or surfing. Seriously , people who object to your colour scheme aren’t likely to have huge intellectual contributions to make to your excellent work. Keep the scheme, I say.

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dswaters

May 11, 2007 at 6:34 am

Thanks for the feedback Graham and Darren. I am grateful, and the hard task now comes in putting content onto the site because unlike my other sites, where I already have a reasonable knowledge skills base, the topic of leadership and professional development is an area that there is so much for me to learn about. And while pink is nice and relaxing the content is way more challenging than Web 2.0 and technology.

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