I Don't Want to Show ME Off

This week's reading was about professional networking. I read a few articles that talk about networking, professionally, via online means. See, it's one thing for me to hand out a copy of my resume to prospective employers, or to e-mail a copy to someone with whom I'm trying to network. Posting it for everyone to see is entirely different. While it's less effort for me because I don't have to send my resume to individual people, it's also much more revealing of myself. It's trading laziness for security.

I'm very stingy with my facebook profile, for it does not reveal my address, phone number, or other personal information at any time. Even the little amount it does reveal, I am able to control who sees. The header of my resume contains my phone number and address. If I'm so stingy with my facebook profile, what are the chances that I'll be in a hurry to post my resume? Very small.

Do I want people to be able to google me? Realistically, no. It would be a little too invasive of my privacy. It's nice to be able to have an online persona that is recognizable and easily findable, but at what price? In my opinion, the price is too high. As a humungous fan of face-to-face interaction, I would rather use other peoples' online information to track them down, to have a face-to-face conversation with them. I have no problem connecting and interacting with people online, it's actually the people that I don't want to interact with, who I'll ultimately end up interacting with because they've tracked me down, that keep me from publishing a back-door to my life on the internet (sometimes literally).

Everything I see says that networking is the most important thing that you can do. I think that becoming the most dedicated, educated, and hard-working person will be enough to set you apart from everyone else. Having a niche that makes you so special will have employers either seeking you, or refusing to turn down employment to you. I plan to have a very specialized career track where I know exactly where I fit, and where there will always be room.

Social Networking on Steroids, Speed, and X

Yes, you read that correctly.

Take 21 seconds to read point #6 of "Working Together...When Apart."

I am the Project Manager for Kogod's class KSB-252: Washington Initiative [Instructor: Allison Holcomb]. The goal of the class is to execute an AU-wide marketing initiative surrounding the Help the Homeless Walkathon, which is sponsored by Fannie Mae and takes place on the National Mall on November 17th.

Our team of 8 meets once weekly, and as such it is my responsibility to make sure that everyone is doing their jobs outside of the meetings. Each member of my team has a lot to do, and my job is essentially 8-fold in trying to keep up with it all. I require my team members to produce finite results for every meeting, and as such I am able to keep them accountable to the group.

I also take ITEC-200 with Professor Melander. You'd better believe that there's a wiki page for that course too. Blackboard, in my opinion, is not the best tool for keeping a class organized. This is why I commend Professor Melander so much for using the wiki pages. I had no idea the things that were possible with wiki's. Likewise, the blog for Brendan Monaghan, our guest speaker two classes ago, featured an awesome video about making a wiki page for a team or an event. My team needs to be able to edit documents together, and collaborate on our project. The above sources [i.e. Professor Melander] inspired me to make a wiki for my team. So, I created ksb252.wetpaint.com. Wetpaint is another site that hosts wiki's, although it does have advertising.

My team members have been responsible for editing several pages, and making noticeable contributions each week in preparation for meetings and events. As a result, our team is very connected, both in and out of the boardroom (we meet in the Kogod boardroom). Our client is very happy with our presentation, and our team is able to get things done in a no-excuse [online] environment that I feel promotes punctuality and cooperation.

So, when I read point #6 above, it made me very excited because for my e-connected team, this is something that I had actually done. And, I was able to related to the article instead of taking it with a grain of salt and much skepticism.

Thank you, Professor.

Stalker

First, let me be very candid in saying, "There are a lot of sick people out there."

Now, if a long lost friend of mine wants to find me, they're more than welcome to search for me on facebook, and send me a message to see if it's me. They wouldn't be able to see any of the very little information in my profile unless I accept their friend request. And that, is not guaranteed to happen.

If a stalker wanted to find out more information about me, they could also search for me on facebook. What would they get? A picture of my head that's about 10 pixels wide. That's about it. I'm very restrictive with the information that I put up online, because I never know who's looking at it. Even with Google Analytics which lets me see where the people that view my blog are from, doesn't tell me who, exactly, they are. Anyone could be snooping... even a prospective employer.

In this way I feel that I have a good balance. People who know me can find me and contact me before finding out more info. People I don't know, don't get any info, but still have the opportunity to message me if they feel so inclined. As I build my life online, including website with that catacomb my work over the years, both professional and collegiate, I want to be able to control who sees and uses it. I feel that someone checking me out online, is practically the same thing as if they were looking through my window at me. It's just as creepy when you find out someone's there, because you don't know what they've seen, or how they've interpreted what they have seen. The online world is a fun and magnificent place, but it can get very scary, very fast when "a motivated person," as Lenhart and Madden describe, hunts you down. These two authors tell us that 63% of teens with online profiles think they could be found. Imagine how many are in denial... imagine how many actually can be found. It's a daunting thought.

http://www.pewinternet.org/report_display.asp?r=211 - "Teens, Privacy and Online Social Networks: How teens manage their online identities and personal information in the age of MySpace."

SPAM

No, not the faux-meat. As much as I don't like SPAM the faux-meat, I dislike e-spam even more. Hearing from the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) of AU last year, 95% of the e-mail that comes through AU's servers is spam. I'd say 95% of the e-mail I receive in Gmail is spam too... thank goodness for the spam filter! I believe that spam has become a great detriment to the system of e-mail, because in some cases, it simply cannot be controlled.

Howard Rheingold, in "Smart Mobs" (See Below), talks about having signed up for a text message service in which members of specific groups could send mass text messages via cell phones to other members in their group, all at once. The groups had specific purposes, like celebrity sightings in NYC, or terrorist attacks, pop-star fans, etc. After reading about this kind of service, in my mind I immediately dismissed it as almost entirely pointless. If you ask me, someone who is a real jerk is bound to sign up for the service and spam everyone's phone with useless messages that either contain false content or don't at all relate to the group. If your cell phone plan does not afford you unlimited text messages, then your monthly bill is going to be huge, in addition to the separate monthly bill for just belonging to the groups service. Talk about a waste of money!

Rheingold mentions (on page 167) that he joined a group of a Lil' BowWow fans. He says he received a text from "a fifteen-year-old lil bowwow fan in Brooklyn [that] just got out of school." Honestly, who gives even the slightest hoot? Rheingold also mentions that he had to switch over to receiving e-mails rather than text messages, which most likely was because of the quantity or [lack of] quality of the content he was receiving. Talk about a waste of time and technology.

If, in the case of the terrorism group, you only receive one text message every three months regarding a very widespread (and not isolated) incident that may actually impact your life, then I can see this system being useful. Otherwise, I don't see the point in wasting my time and money on a service that will, in my opinion, make me dumber for using it.

"Smart Mobs" by Howard Rheingold: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780738208619&itm=1. His personal page: http://www.rheingold.com/.