Far too honestly, I hadn’t looked at Linkedin for reasons much
beyond staying ‘connected’ or for the occasional job search. With the advent of
social networking in the last half decade, here was a platform that had a
PROFESSIONAL look and feel to it. A site that was meant for professionals to
LINK to each other, explore their networks, for recruiters to find another
medium to post jobs and the likes. As amazing and impressive as it was, I had
some difficulty initially to fathom it.
Social networking is a skill and not many truly realize
that. Every social network has a feature and purpose about it that make it
different from the others. The whole general point of social networks though is
that it enables someone to make sense of your person on the web. It helps
people understand your hobbies, your activities, your associations, networks of
friends, your choices, activities and so on. Advertisers are likely to pull up
trends on your personal data on FB to post ‘customised’ or ‘sponsored’ ads.
Your photos, checkins, status trends give much meaningful insights into what is
likely to ’catch your attention’.
If FB is personal yet social, Twitter is primarily a way to
get a real time idea of what you think about world events. Much real time news
today is available on Twitter accurately and quickly than anywhere else. Google
is hot as ever for search, mail and the ‘personal’ collaborative tools. The
other sites enable you to manage people, google helps you manage yourself.
Somewhere in all of this lies the equally amazing linkedin.
Equally because every other is; amazing i’ll tell you why. Linkedin has this
amazing side feature “Interests”. One subpart of that is “Groups”. Without
drawing parallels, I view Groups as a social network in itself. The Groups
feature enables one to join a group of professionals of the same mix. For
instance, as an IT PM, my most obvious choice for a group is a Project
Manager’s group. A search for such a group lists out all such groups that exist
in the Linkedin universe. Typically, this list is sorted in the descending
order of group size, or in a way that places the most popular groups at the
top.
Within a group is where the fun is. You are likely to meet a
lot of people from all across the globe and who share similar interests. I am
part of atleast 2 such PM groups. There are members that cut across lines of
most parameters. The members are from all age groups, countries regions, even
sectors!! Some members are veterans and some are recent graduates. The simply
humongous variety of people that the groups features affords is itself awe
inspiring.
And the best part of groups is the discussions. This feature
allows members to post topics of discussions and others can contribute this by
posting their opinions. People from
various sectors contribute their opinions to such topics of common interest,
agree, sometimes quarrel even. As surprised as I was too understand just how
much Risk Management meant in IT, I was more amazed to learn that Risk
Management is an important aspect even in the consulting business!! The Project
Charter that I know in IT is an integral component in any other industry too!!
That the problems I encounter as PM in IT are shared by PMs in other,
completely disparate industries too!
Linkedin has totally caught my attention now! Each
discussion is a mini blog, an online learning in itself. This gives me the
opportunity to express my views freely, interact with legends from industries,
and at the end, learn real time. That’s one for being ‘Linked’
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