Alternatives

Reading on from Des Walsh’s recommendations, I was poised to start working my way down Rick Upton’s list of recommended steps to get the most out of LinkedIn (http://www.rickupton.com/linkedin-tips.htm).

I say poised, but my wandering attention had led me onto another page in Rick Upton’s site where he discusses alternative networks (http://linkedin-notes.blogspot.com/2005/08/which-network-linkedin-ryze-ecademy.html). Reading through this prompted me to look at OpenBC (https://www.openbc.com/), which is about to rebrand itself as Xing (I guess it wants to eschew the image of a distance learning institute in western Canada in favour of sounding like a Chinese teen band). Facetious humour aside, I kind of like the sound of something that is europa-centric, rather than state-side, and multilanguage features appeal to my fellow europeans, giving me a chance to develop networks using all the languages I can speak.

Considering they are planning to relaunch before year end, I think I will focus on LinkedIn for now, and try them out once they’re up and running (http://www.xing.com/)

Next steps

Since learning about networking sites, and seeing how crass people can be in the more public ones like MySpace, I have been a little wary of the whole concept. Well, how do you know whether something is just the latest over-hyped fad, or whether it is in fact destined to be the best thing since sliced-bread.

Just in case, I had judiciously saved a link to a post I drifted across, by Des Walsh.

http://www.deswalsh.com/

Now I would be the first to admit that anybody who introduces themselves as a “business coach and blogging evangelist” risks being tarred with the brush “purveyor of hype”, but I suspended my disbelief, and uncharacteristically left the shortcut saved on my desktop

http://www.deswalsh.com/2006/05/13/linkedin-bloggers-group-approaching-first-anniversary/

Part of the agreement I made with myself in signing up for LinkedIn was that I should make a proper go of it, and invest the time in getting it right. That’s why I have risked eating in to the little time I have available in my busy routine by joining up for the LinkedInnovators and LinkedInBloggers Yahoo Groups. Well, Des, I really do hope you know what you’re talking about.

The story so far

Just so I don’t loose where this sory began…

I had been thinking about joining LinkedIn for a couple of months, since coming across the name a few times whilst surfing, it but was not sure whether it was worth the effort. Now that I am starting to try and find a new source of work, an old friend of mine Mike Parker (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/366/93b) galvanised me to sign up.

Sad what makes me happy

Oooh blimey, I’ve just realised – I can make my problic profile have a more friendly name

My Profile / Public Profile URL / [Edit]

So now it has become…

http://www.linkedin.com/in/arthurmgallagher

Hmmm, I’m starting to wonder if I can handle all the publicity I’ll start getting (in my dreams ;-))

Actually, I’ll be honest, that I have been a bit bashful so far, and almost proud of the fact that googling for “Arthur M. Gallagher” turned up no results. I guess that I must learn to get over this shyness if I am going to make internet-based networking work for me.

Statement of intent

Well, I have finally taken the leap and joined LinkedIn. If I am ever going to get anything good out of a networking tool like this I guess I am going to have to invest some time in it. And because I professionally prefer to leave an audit trail (rather than rely on the fickle recall of my own memory), I have decided to record my progress using this blog. I wish myself luck 😉

Here’s my public LinkedIn profile:

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/2/820/964