Reflecting on volunteering and work-life balance
I spent the morning doing web archaeology work – I updated the Limerick Riverpath Volunteers website by digging content and dates out of its lively Facebook page and of my photo folders. There are still a few posts in draft stage, because I need to confirm names and events, but it’s almost there. We are organising an event dedicated to the Plassey Black Bridge tomorrow, as part of Heritage Week, and people will probably check our website.
Maintaining a digital presence for groups and organisations I am part of is work that I am inclined to take on without thinking about it as “work”. But when I run out of time and my university work obligations become overwhelming, the pressure of having these on my to-do list and the guilt feeling brought by the thought that I am disappointing people are simply too much!
Trying to do a quick count: the Limerick City of Culture 2014 projects I worked on last year all have websites I am still responsible for. The Limerick Lace one is up-to-date. The Are You Dancing? website still needs work and the transfer to its permanent home is not yet complete. The video recordings from last year’s 3Dcamp still need to be uploaded.
The website of the Communities & Technologies conference, that we had the honour to host this year at the University of Limerick has done its job for this edition and I am preparing its transfer to the Troyes University of Technology for the 2017 edition.
The IxDA Limerick website needs to be brought up-to-date with this autumn’s events, as part of a Year of Irish Design 2015 grant that we received. Maintaining the website is part of our in kind contribution.
The UL Environmental Committee site needs to be updated too. I contribute quite a bit to the UL Community Roof Garden blog and Facebook page.
And there’s plenty of work to be done on the Creative Communities website as well.
I like this kind of work and I am good at it. But I will have to stop one day, because the sheer amount of work is not sustainable. So, who wants to take over?
We tend to upload everything to Facebook and Twitter on the go nowadays, and although this is excellent for immediacy – you read about events as they happen – they are not suitable for keeping a permanent archive of what a group or organisation does. Any of these needs a public facing permanent home on the web for various purposes, easy to find, to access and search. I’m almost thinking about a plugin that would repost stuff from Facebook to WordPress, although I am quite sure that Facebook wouldn’t like this idea!
August 22 2015 07:44 pm | blogging and Communities