interacting with experts: steve thomas speaks

This fascinating man works by day, reads, posts interesting articles and takes FABULOUS photos in his spare time.

I have to confess though to having one of those famous FaceBook moments where I couldn't remember how we originally hooked up!!

The aaaah moment came when I remembered it was through one of my daughters rowing team mates mums FanPages, linking me through the Barr Smith Library page to a guy who was having trouble attracting members to his group (phew - what a classic). I offered a word of advise (it was limited to the Adelaide network) and there in lay the start of a few conversations. I am now in aw. Steve was already in the process of setting up the FanPage better and he in no way needed my help really but I guess it's really just the support and chat that makes all this fun. I have now personally met Steve and his lovely partner Kay through the Adelaide Bloggers meet-up.

I asked Steve a few questions... especially about his photography work and how he links it all together. This is what he came back with:

Letters from Adelaide
http://spotrick.wordpress.com/

(Charlie) "Saw your comment on my blog page too. The makings of a good "interview":

"So, what makes Flickr so much better? Does it have it’s own niche? If we have happy snaps on FB, why don’t professionals sell via istock? Is Flickr just the professional photographers hide out?"

Flickr has just been around for a long time, is all. It has been dedicated to photo sharing (they've just started allowing short videos as well), so in that sense it is a niche site. But it has all kinds of images, from happy snaps to the most wonderful artistic work. And pr0n of course. But they have a pretty good safe-search system that means you have to look for that, so easily avoided.

Flickr is not for professionals, because it doesn't provide a mechanism for selling your work. Some of us use Red Bubble for that, but there are other sites that do similar.

Interestingly, some people use Flickr as a kind of blog, adding long texts to their pictures. But there are better options now: it's so easy to upload a picture to your blog and write about it there. Or add pics to Facebook. Or ... One thing we're not short of in this online world is options.

"Where do you find people - FaceBook or LinkedIn… "

Well, if I was looking for work, I'd be working on LinkedIn. But I'm not, so that's just a "placeholder" for me. (But others have found me through that.) Because I have a (hopefully) secure position at the Uni, I'm more about exploring the uses of social media for communication, so currently "working the room" through Facebook. But I happen to think that Facebook is maturing rapidly into something that might compete with LinkedIn, as a way of developing professional relationships. Once you get past the vampires and other nonsense, FB is a pretty good way of maintaining contacts. Teamed with Twitter, a blog, and RSS, it's shaping up as pretty amazing. Something like a complete online expression of self. Yikes!

"What is your blog strategy?"

LOL! My blog strategy is to try to remember to blog about things I have an opinion on. E.g. I'm now reading the papers online as well as in print, which means I can express my opinions instantly as I read. Maybe not always a good thing, but then I'm not looking for a Pulitzer. Or a job. I don't bother with AdSense (yet) because I think that would make me sensitive to the number of page views, and that would make it into a chore rather than a joy.

There's a whole book waiting to be written on the subject of page views and comments and the anxiety engendered by not getting any!

Feel free to ask more questions!

Cheers,
Steve