Phew! This is now the fourth in this series, where I ask friends to share their social media experiences. Today, Tim Horton, the South Australian Commissioner for Integrated Design.

Check out the IDSC website for what this role means – but be sure to check the FlickR feed too. Tim often shares cityscape images.

1. What is your favourite social media platform – and why? Twitter for keeping a watching brief on emerging global trends, programs and projects across the fields of design, planning and development. Facebook as a way of keeping a handle on a large extended family spread across the globe. Why? The ‘friend request’ permissions offered by Facebook supports a more deliberate strategy for crafting friends and setting up secure groups for more discrete sharing.
2. What made you begin using social media? Watching an experimental boundary-riding colleague shift from blogging on his site www.supercolossal.ch to an expanded platform, including Twitter and Facebook.  While the commitment to a blog site seemed onerous, Twitter seemed to require no long term commitment. 18 months later it’s become second nature.
3. What’s the question you’re asked most about Twitter? “How do you get the time?”
4. Do you have a “plan” for your personal use of social media? No formal plan, but my ‘Twitter self’ is broadly professional; and rarely share personal/family experience. A general aim to share the breadth of the work the Commission on a day to day basis.
5. What do you gain from using social media? A constant stream of local and global emerging initiatives in design, architecture & built environment policy, including experiences from cities, universities and research centres, and design practices. Related interests in science & innovation, information technology, environmental science, social science and social innovation. And intriguing personalities that feed, provoke and sustain an active and restless mind.