The new school year in Serbia is about to start, and local newspapers are filled with techno anti-utopian articles on the bad effects of the Internet and social networks. A survey on the use of Facebook by the youth in Serbia has been published recently, too, however, and its results suggest that things aren’t really that bad.

More about the usage of Facebook among Serbian youth in my Global Voices article.  Those who’ve asked me about the photo I’ve contributed in the featured text:  it was taken in the downtown of Belgrade, in the Internet cafe, and I use it for my slides, for conference talks.

Feel free to comment.

For those who are in Oxford these days for parallel conferences that are happening around (TransferSummit/UK, BarCamp), I want to let you know that I’m giving a talk at the interdisciplinary conference  on ‘Problems of Adolescence”.

Oxford University Centre for the History of Childhood is organising one day event, this Saturday, 26 June 2010, at Magdalen college.  The speakers (the program)come from different backgrounds: anthropology, clinical psychology, history of education, science and medicine, childhood studies, and social sciences and Web (moi).

I will talk about Adolescents and the Web: in particular social network sites (SNS), and communication, social, dynamics and practices on Facebook. This will be very interesting event, and I’m thankful to, both, UK and overseas peers, OII colleagues, and friends who’ve shared some data (British stats and references), as I’ve been analysing teen profiles and came to interesting observations that I’ll share later on with you either through an article (text of talk or proceedings) or slides.

If you are around this Saturday, come and say Hi.

Wikimania is an annual international conference dedicated to Wikimedia projects around the globe (including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wiktionary, Wikispecies, Wikimedia Commons, and MediaWiki).

This year’s conference will be held July 9-11, 2010 in Gdansk, Poland at Polish Baltic Philharmonic. For more information, visit the official Wikimania 2010 site: http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/

The event is a community gathering, giving the editors, users and developers of Wikimedia projects an opportunity to meet each other, exchange ideas, report on research and projects, and collaborate on the future of the projects. The conference is open to the public, and is a chance for educators, researchers, programmers and free culture activists who are interested in the Wikimedia projects to learn more, present and share ideas.

Wikimania 2010 will be a mix of submitted talks, open space meetings, birds of a feather groups, and lightning talks. Submissions will be discussed and selected in an informal process on the wiki.

As being said in the Call for Participation, this year Wikimania will offer three tracks for submissions for members of wiki communities and interested observers to share their own experiences and thoughts and to present new ideas: people and community, knowledge and collaboration and infrastructure track.

Deadline for submitting workshop, tutorial, panel, and presentation proposals is May 20th. Submit yours, no less than 300 words, and see you in July in Poland.

From Thursday I’m off to UK tour visiting friends around England’s, ending up far North, and after New years Eve returning back to pack for States. I won’t be checking my email regularly, but will be here and there online. My mobile will be on, I receive and send tweet DM’s regularly, and wherever wifi allows me to be present – I’ll be networked. You can check my schedule on Dopplr (if you’re a friend and using it, let me know), and of course – my Twitter stream updates. I’ll bring with me lot of eBooks and literature to read, some of those are good old paper books that I’m looking forward to hold and read.

Also, I’m ready for Science Online conference on the east coast, USA this/next January, to meet again wonderful folks from all over the globe, interact and collaborate. I miss my friends and colleagues, so I’m looking forward to see you all very soon. If you didn’t signed up for the Friday morning workshop I’m giving on social media tools and services, please do register. The only requirement is to bring yourself and laptop.

Next year will be super-excited and challenging for me in every field, as the 2009. was absolutely wonderful bringing lot of great events, people, awards, places I’ve been living/working, and the great adventures. I’m looking forward to 2010, hoping to be even better, as the same I wish to all of you who are reading these words. In the next year, I’ll be writing for different media too, so you’ll read me on other places on Web. It will be challenging both for work and PhD research, dissertation and other activities, I don’t know where I’ll be next. All I know that I’d need to get disciplined and make some time during the year for myself and my personal life as 2009. was insanely working fun mixture of random nature escapades.

I may post in the mid-0f-travel adventure more of my thoughts or announcements, so stay tuned.

For those in UK, don’t miss this weeks’ OII forum on Relationships and the Internet, that will take place this Friday, 4 December at 10am, followed by the public panel at 4pm. The forum will gather researchers in the fields of social networking, online dating, practitioners from a growing and international relationship industry and policy-makers concerned with consumer protection and media literacy in a digital age. Taken from the background to the forum:

Research on the role of the Internet in meeting new people is an increasingly vital area of inquiry, and is illustrated by a burgeoning literature on such topics as online dating. However, the Internet may shape many other aspects of relationships beyond introducing individuals, such as in undermining or maintaining ongoing relationships, from courtship to marriage.

This forum will look at the state of the art of academic research on relationships and the Internet and how this research informs research on the social aspects of the Internet in general, such as issues of trust and identity. Cross-national and cross-cultural aspects will be addressed in ways that can illuminate general cross-cultural trends and responses shaping use of the Internet in building and maintaining relationships. The forum will draw out the connections between this research and such emerging issues of policy and practice as involved in efforts to foster a digital economy in Europe.

More about the speakers and the panel here.

Sometimes 140 characters are not enough to express myself,  so I decided to write a reflection on motivation, organization, tasks, projects, and how I keep up with everything as reply to your questions, rants on Twitter.  It’s summer time and most of you are on vacation, but some of us still work.

Many of you asked, complained on Twitter how one keep up with parallel projects, tasks, many of you fell overwhelmed, stressed out, etc.  Some of you asked how do I attack tasks, and what does it mean. Just to let you know you are not the only one in the multitasking/parallel projects/tasks executing. But somehow I found my way to keep up with many projects that I face every day (no rocket science). Here are simple things I practice in order to attack my tasks and not vice versa, and they work for me so far.

Emails.
What I’m practicing lately is to see just few relevant emails per day, not zillions as it was in the past.
I managed to teach my inbox to behave. How? I’ve filtered emails within topics or subjects and labeled them. So only important emails I receive on daily basis from the people I expect emails, others skip the inbox and end in labeled folders, I check them once or twice per week. This way I put off less pressure on checking incoming emails or seeing emails I don’t want to see. It’s such relief. My inbox at this point is two unread emails, in the past was over 1900 emails [Flickered that]. This also refers to social network sites messages or notifications: if you send me e.g. Facebook message, I am ignoring that. It’s true I have several hundred unread FB messages, but please use email to contact me.

Smart Phone.
I’ve set up my smart phone to remind me on tasks, meetings when I’m not working on computer and when I’m on the run. Those are usually tasks, and meeting memo’s related to my work. Off work,  I use to-do notes that remind me on what I have to do or buy. I am not yet on Alzheimer’s, but when I go shopping I like to see the list. There are too much things in my life that at least I can have PDA on my phone. Also, I like analogue post-it task notes. All my 2009 I’ve planned in 2008 post-it wall with different colors schema [seen on Flicker].

Meetings.
Regarding the scheduling the meetings I usually set up 50% of the schedules and other 50% I am scheduled. For the second I prefer to have heavy mental work in the morning hours after 10 am (not a fan of early morning meetings) and they should be brief, right to the point (if they are not presentations that require an hour or so). I respect other people’s time and I want mine to be respected. My meetings attention span is short and I am advocating that in 10-20 minutes you can have perfect meeting if you get straight to the point(s).

Deadlines.
I’m not perfect in this department. I go to the extremes: I’m either before deadline or after (few days), but what I do is always let people know in advance that I will be late, and ask for some extension. It’s simple as that.

Parallel projects.
Many of you complained “oh how am I going to do several things at the same time, I am overloaded”, etc. The thing is you cannot (read: can not) do several things at the *same* time, it is physically impossible and can be very stressful. What I do is I set up the priorities through the day of those projects I’m currently doing. For those at my job,  I am lucky because I usually work with a person on consultations and this helps me alot. I always want to hear second opinion and to see if I’m going in the right direction. I handle things much faster and better if I am communicating with someone on certain issue and then I withdraw and do the rest on my own.
If some of the data or outcome depends on the others (group of people or institution(s) ) – you have to learn how to make people to do things you want them to do. I make them do things by saying what I expect from them or saying directly what they should do, usually I suggest social media tools to facilitate their work that reflects my projects. I cannot tell you how I do this – I guess it goes with practice and time, being tactful with people, but for those who don’t meet my professional needs or not being prompt, I am ruthless here and use TCP/IP slapping device ::smile::
If some things become critical and are not done because of the non promptness of the others, in that case I don’t have time to loose or wait for them. I either ask someone else or simply take things into my hands and got my task/project done. I am happy, others are happy.
Great deal of tricks I’ve learnt and have to thank to my supervisor who taught me how to enjoy my work, deal with different kind of people [story on crocodile and the chick] and if needed to torture them ::giggle::
I wouldn’t accomplish all alone for some grande projects, esp. those that requires consultations if i didn’t cooperate with my lovely colleagues (call me lucky and blessed to work with fantastic people), and people from my area of work from world wide institutions.

Communication.
When dealing with lot of projects, it is important to communicate and what is the most important to be honest and state what you can or cannot do or accomplish at certain time. I always analyse situation before I accept something. I talk to people. Face to face. Emails. I tell them what I think, show them my concerns, ask for their opinion.

One more thing to finish with: I am not perfect. I have six grande “projects” to accomplish before fall (October 2009), one book included – the one I didn’t start to write yet and I have due soon. How I am going to handle all that? I don’t know, I just follow my schedule and do one thing at a time at that certain moment. It is true I don’t party every night,  yes- my personal time management is pretty messy, yes – I don’t have time for workout, yes- I have to improve my nutrition system, yes- I need to start to do yoga again, yes -many times no free weekends, but what really keeps me going on here is the awareness that I’m doing/creating good things that have great future on the longer run plus I’m interacting with interesting people, and I’m getting more and more experienced in life (not only work) – which is the greatest asset. Above all – I am trying to enjoy myself.

I would like to read the feedback from you: what works for you and what not? How do you keep up with all the tasks you have? What part of your life suffers? What would you like to change?