An Arthur's Seat stomp on a frosty December afternoon - numerous failed photos of the dog result in a quite spectacular view of his tail pointing in the opposite of the peak, with Edinburgh Castle sort of visible in the background.

In the four or so months since I moved back north of the border and took on a new job heading up National Museums Scotland's digital team I've been immersing myself in the world of museums online. For those of you lucky, lucky people who follow me on twitter, you'll know that I try to tweet a regular 'museum site du jour' (a supremely pretentious title, not to be confused with the 'baguette du jour' on offer from the not-very-good sandwich shop opposite my fine place of work). This originally started as a way of me keeping some sort of order to the sites I came across - I've never been much good at categorising my browser bookmarks; delicious.com is handy but requires a bit too much tag thought - and the 140 character limit is a bit of a micro creative challenge to occupy my brain for a few minutes.

Being new to the culture sector it's been a useful way of putting myself on the map, and thanks to the serendipitous way twitter works it's led to some really useful contacts and conversations. As I'm keen on the old web metrics, it's been intriguing to see that if bit.ly's stats can be trusted I average anywhere between 20 and 60 click throughs per link, depending on the time of day I post and number of retweets I pick up. So whilst I'm hardly setting the web alight with hot museum content, my experience tells me that - comparatively speaking - I'm a better traffic source to the particular sites I've selected than many of the shambolic display or search marketing campaigns I've had the pleasure of working on over the years.

Anyway, all this has got me thinking about what and how to measure in this interconnected world of ours. It seems a new twitter measurement tool appears every week (klout.com this week - I am such a social media also-ran) and there are countless tools that profess to measure buzz, influence, connectedness, etc, etc. This is all well and good, but as a media owner (so to speak) I know it's a struggle to evaluate, articulate and then take action on even the most rudimentary statistics. So while I find it fascinating, even exciting, on a personal level I wonder how much social measurement truly translates on a professional level. And by 'truly' I mean linked to clear objectives, not a box-ticking approach to no of visits, friends, followers...

I'd love to know what other organisations are measuring, and then what they do with the information as a result. In a sector which isn't driven by ROI - or at least where ROI can be somewhat intangible - it would be nice to see a standard approach emerge.

Photo by Biking Nixon PDX

This is a by no means definitive list of articles on social media measurement. Thankfully not everyone mentions Dell.

• Two examples of companies measuring social media ROI
• Socialnomics nice little vid about measuring ROI in social media
• Search Engine Watch's Social Media success stories
• Dell's $3million on twitter and four better(?) examples
• Fun-but-focused slideshare presentation
• The usual excellent standard from Econsultancy
• Beth Kanter's presentation and blog post on the subject of non-profit social media ROI (one of many on her superior site)

Abour two years ago I travelled to Liberia as part of a communications tour with Oxfam. Tonight I finally managed to upload some photos of the trip on Flickr, so I guess I'm going for a 'better late than never' theme. The trip was an incredible experience - distressing and inspiring in equal measure - but it was a high point in my time at Oxfam; a rare insight into the real work the organisation does and the results it achieves, and a far cry from my office-based day job.

The photograph above is my favourite shot - some kids followed us around the village (Gobachop, just outside the capital city Monrovia) as we looked at public health and education facilites Oxfam had funded. As I stopped to take some photos of the latrines they both struck a 'don't mess' style pose, I love it.

I won't attempt to sum up the horror of Liberia's civil wars in this post, further info can be found at the following sites:

• Wikipedia entry on Liberia
• Oxfam pages on Liberia
• Zadie Smith's Observer article on Oxfam's Liberia programme

I think a blog on posterous may be my last resort in terms of the life non-pursuit that is my relationship with the Internet. Ever since I built my first code-murdering website in 1996 I've dreamed of an existence where I bounce creative ideas, intriguing snippets and humorous musings onto my own little portion of the world wide web. Every two years or so I've gone through the motions of setting up a website only to see it languish unloved until my next unpredictable burst of energy. I then abandon all previous endeavours, thrust the 'old online me' into the nearest metaphorical wastebasket, and spend hours pushing pixels around a photoshop screen attempting to create something that chimes with whatever design trends are current. I've bought stacks of hosting space, set up countless profiles and dipped my toe unceremoniously into blog after blog after blog...

And I suspect I'm not alone.

Even as a relatively young 'un in terms of what I do as a day job I'd be willing to bet that my experiences fall in line with a lot of folks my age. Despite the urge, the ideas, the impetus even, the reality that is living one's life online is not something that I do as a native. Early adopter for sure - from Spectrum to Atari ST to Macintosh: by far the coolest route - I've always been comfortable with the kit. But I think there are few of my generation who are genuinely throwing it all out there, save from the relatively safe walled garden that is facebook.

So, as an electronic twin to my twitter alter ego (and it is at least in part about ego after all) let's see if I can sustain this updating malarkey. Check back in two weeks to observe virtual silence.