sirexkat
This is me, I work on the web.
I live in Fremantle, Western Australia and I look at emerging web technologies and how we can use them in our university library. I tell people about them, show them how to use them, rave about them and then step back and let people make up their own minds. They know more about their jobs and clients than I do, so they can work it out.
I also like to tinker and develop and tweak online tools for the library to use. I love making screencasts and video clips and podcasts. I'm far more of a visual learner than a text based one.
I've been using the internet since 1988. That's about 20 years, half my life and all of my adult life. Back in 1989 I showed my uni classmates the internet as a class assignment - I had the class over to my home because the uni hadn't provided internet access in academics' offices yet. I loved showing the web to executives when I worked in the local government (I got to bring my own modem in from home that time) and writing the first web pages for a Western Australian public library.
I find myself having the same conversations around Web 2.0 tools as I did back in the early 90's. Me: "Hey - look - shiny, useful - can I show you?". Them: "We don't have the stuff". Me: "Can I make some at home and bring it in?". Them: "No....well why do we want to know about it?..oh OK...hey, this might be useful, but it will never catch on...actually, can we have a bit more please?"
The web has provided me with a support group when I was pregnant with my first son, information about cancer treatments when my mum was dying, let me book a celebrant in Queensland when we eloped and now provides a powerful collaborative professional tool.
The web has changed the way I find social support in the real world. I'm part of several online networks that exchange ideas, pleasantries and daily trivia all over the web. I attend events and meetings organised over the web that continue this conversation - so I feel much more relaxed and able to be me when I'm in the same room as people I already know online. Going out to events and with groups of people is actually becoming fun - it was just stressful before.
NOTE: for the "I work on the web" meme. Click on the tag to see more web workers