Network abuse

Spent the last days filling holes in my online profile. It’s ironic, I always say people should eat their own dog food when I’m guilty on all counts myself.

I clearly remember the conversation I had with a PR rep. It was all about being “on” twitter and being “in” LinkedIn. At the time — and pretty much up to this weekend — I looked at these tools as gimmicks. I am who I say am, right? Looking at the various online recommendations dating from, well, the beginning of the century, I again noticed just how naïve I’ve been.

There are some interesting points I’ve bumped into while updating my profile. Most frustrating is that my American colleagues all have names like Doug Wells and Gene Brown. Good luck with that! Also, I tended to skip from place-to-place in order to build up a more general knowledge of IT across all industries; I’ve written on the downfall of that approach. So, it doesn’t help much that I was in a single place just long enough to get my head filled before jumping ship. I didn’t stay long enough to really build the sort of personal relationships that are necessary (now) with LinkedIn. Sure, I shared a few beers and whatnot but only one person ever let me watch their cat. Last, and most importantly, I didn’t keep a little black book. How useful that could be right about now.

So, no more sarcastic smirks; let’s see how this works.

By the way, if you know Gene Brown, tell him I said hi.