One is the loneli­est num­ber. But one isn’t the num­ber for social com­put­ing, 23 is!

My friend Matthew posted this morn­ing about 23 Things. It’s a pro­gram being run by the Cal­i­for­nia School Library Asso­ci­a­tion to, in their own words:

…encour­age all of us to exper­i­ment and learn about the new and emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies that are reshap­ing the con­text of infor­ma­tion on the Inter­net today. The CSLA 2.0 Team mod­i­fied The Learn­ing 2.0 pro­gram designed by Helene Blow­ers, Tech­nol­ogy Direc­tor, Pub­lic Library of Char­lotte & Meck­len­burg County and is loosely based upon Stephen Abram’s arti­cle, 43 Things I (or You) might want to do this year (Infor­ma­tion Out­look — Feb­ru­ary 2006) and the web­site 43 Things. We also drew heav­ily from the jslibrarylearning2 pro­gram.

This strikes me as an excel­lent way to get peo­ple involved in using and adopt­ing social com­put­ing prac­tices in their work and “real” lives. I think I’ll intro­duce it to my cur­rent main client, The Depart­ment of Immi­gra­tion and Cit­i­zen­ship. So, here’s to start­ing a meme — 23 Things and how I do it.

Life­long learn­ing — I barely have time to read and watch all the things I col­lect to build my knowl­edge. RSS feeds, books by the dozen, pod­casts. My brain is full to overflowing!

Blog­ging — I blog here, and here, and here. It’s a great way to get your over­crowded brain less full of the things you can’t track. And it’s easy, just drop over to Word­Press and sign up. ‘Nuf said!

Pho­tos and Images — take a look at my Flickr pho­tos, then start explor­ing. There is some amaz­ing work here.

Using RSS — why go to all those sites every day when you can have the infor­ma­tion from them aggre­gated in a sin­gle place? Google Reader is free, so sign up, and look for that lit­tle orange icon on every site you visit. Click and sub­scribe to the feed. No more wast­ing time! Don’t under­stand what I’m talk­ing about? Look at this.

Play — If only I had the time to play more! The social com­put­ing world is so full of inter­est­ing things to explore, that there’s barely time. Take a look at some of the awe­some mashups on Pro­gram­ma­bleWeb. There’s a start.

Tag­ging, Folk­sonomies & Tech­no­rati — Data wants to be free, and it wants you to define it your way. And to share those def­i­n­i­tions — your tags. Join del​.icio​.us or ma.gnolia and start book­mark­ing and tag­ging. Let your friends know what you’re up to and that they should do the same. Here are my book­marks at del​.icio​.us and ma.gnolia.

Wikis — I don’t con­tribute to Wikipedia as much as oth­ers, but I have been involved in a few efforts to get wikis up and run­ning, and I use Tid­dly­Wiki as a per­sonal note­book of sorts.

Online Appli­ca­tions & Tools — Let’s see… Google, Upcom­ing, Dopplr, Tan­gler… plus many more.

Pod­casts, Video & Down­load­able Audio — I reg­u­larly con­sume about a dozen video or audio ‘casts. You can find thou­sands at the iTunes Store. There’s sure to be one that’s up your alley.

One thing to remem­ber with all of this is that social com­put­ing is ulti­mately about peo­ple. People’s opin­ions of things. People’s likes and dis­likes. And most of all, social com­put­ing allows us to con­nect and recon­nect with peo­ple in a world where we are increas­ingly busy.