• I registered for a course (Facilitating Online Communities) over the weekend, and participants are to track our progress using a blog. Week one tasks are to set up a blog (check), modify our profiles with our blog address (about to do), and set up a feed reader (check – luckily done some time ago using Bloglines).
• As well, I’ve been planning to participate in SLA’s 23 Things since getting back from the conference in Seattle last month. Week 1 task was easy and is completed – read the introduction to the program! Week 2 task is to set up a blog (check).

My (continued) observation is that one needs a great deal of patience when learning new technologies. Yesterday, I was on the phone with support at my ISP off and on throughout the day. They’re a great bunch, very accessible by phone – and that’s a good thing because their written documentation is a bit sparse. All was proceeding rather nicely with installing WordPress in a subdirectory of my website, when I got a message saying that “it” wasn’t able to create a database. It seems that I need to have at least one database available on my site. This I found out after-hours last night. Today, I upgraded my hosting package to get the database function. The rest was relatively easy (with a phone call or two to a colleague who has been down this road) – thank you, you know who you are.
It’s off to the races, now, as I move forward with both learning experiences. I’ll be tracking what I’m doing and my thoughts on the process in this blog.