Norms, Anyone?

I’ve been mentioning the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce’s New Media Technology Conference (#FredNMT) to friends and business colleagues and more than a few have reacted as if they had just tasted soap. They tell me, for example, they don’t like Facebook and can’t even imagine using Twitter in any way. Now, my guess is that no one sympathetic with this point of view will be reading this blog, so I won’t argue that point. Rather, let’s consider what some folks don’t like about this new-fangled New Media.

These everyday, technologically capable people tell me they don’t like the idea of sharing or seeing what they consider personal information up on a computer screen. The first reason is they don’t want the wrong person – whoever that might be – to know anything about them. Secondly, they just find they don’t want to know much of what some people share.

I know I am not alone in being careful about anything I post on WaterCoolerView.com and on MScottatFCC. I am a Frederick County Workforce Services employee and we partner with Frederick Community College; it is certainly true in the modern world that no one involved wants me to offend anyone in their name. So, how do we know how not to offend anyone?

Norms are defined as “spoken or unspoken rules that distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate behavior.” So, in different ways my friends and I are wondering, “What are the norms?” Some obvious norms include no profanity, no personal attacks, really no attacks at all – but are there less obvious norms?

I think the question of "what is private and what is public" is an area where the norms are not so obvious, and there are many more. I am inviting the Frederick new media technology community to ponder about the question of norms as we prepare for the conference. What do you think?

-Marc