Kiwi Scrum HomeNext NewsletterOpen Future HomeHello Everyone,
Kiwi Scrum has 1620 members.
Most of the people joining have only the vaguest idea about how to use LinkedIn, or LinkedIn Groups. There is good information on the Kiwi Scrum Homepage but that's on my web site, and many people don't know were to find it. The Kiwi Scrum Homepage. (Bookmark it now.)
When you connect to new people on LinkedIn, make an attempt to open a little chat. Comment on something from their LinkedIn Profile. See if you get a reaction. I write to everyone. Too often in the past it's been a standard; "Thanks for the connection and here's what I'm doing" letter. Recently I've shortened the letter, but added a line or two specifically for the person I'm writing to. That's better, but it does take more time.
If you open "Contacts"; "My Connections"; you'll find on the left "Tags" with a link that says "Manage". LinkedIn have offered some pretty useless tag examples. "Classmates", "Friends", "Group Members", "Partners" and others but the people in the groups were hopelessly wrong. I deleted every tab except "Friends". I then deleted all the "Friends" LinkedIn had added who were not really friends: at all. I've also added about 30 tags of my own, that I hope will be useful. An easy way of adding tags, from the member profile has not yet been offered by LinkedIn.
The BBC has begun a new TV series: "The Virtual Revolution", showing at 4.05am NZ time on Monday mornings. There is also a blog site.
For me the first programme reinforces the power of the web to make us all more literate. We WRITE, far more than we have done in the past. Writing is a thinking tool, as is speaking, and reading. I'm reading fewer books, but the books I do read are better selected.
In the same way I read a LOT of material from the internet and collect far too much paper. This has meant that I write much less in my journal, but what I do write there is better chosen, and more carefully thought through. The quality of my journal writing has improved. The ideas I'm working on are stronger.
Last week I got mail from a man I met on the web 5 years ago. We've exchanged notes 4-5 times. He's invited me to help him develop a training programme. About the same time I got an email about how to find Tom Norton, a respected Canadian educator, who appears in my journal, away back in 1993, and whose ideas I've used several times. I'm often disappointed that online collaboration which looks so easy, in reality, proves to be quite hard. We expect things to happen too quickly. Good things take time.
Newbies to LinkedIn are often very reluctant to build their networks. Yes, LinkedIn tells you to ONLY connect to people you "know". Some people think that means people you've met and worked with. That's a very restrictive policy. Everybody seems to get more and more liberal with who they choose to link too over time. Once I used to have a restrictive policy to. MOST of the value I gain from LinkedIn is by linking to almost everyone possible, by being an open networker. NONE, of the experienced users of LinkedIn, I personally know, connect ONLY to people they "know". That should tell you that LinkedIn's policy is designed to protect LinkedIn and isn't necessarily the "best" advice. I strongly recommend using the Kiwi Scrum Open networkers.
What are you doing as a volunteer? "The Virtual Revolution" states quite clearly that the Internet was built by millions of people "working for nothing". Well, not for money anyway. Working because the TASK, was worthy, because the work needed doing, because "if not me, then Who?" Here's one thing I contributed to "Fouryears.go." last week.
I linked to Ingo Schnabel a few days ago. Ingo is Dutch, but he's lived in Nepal for many years. A bit of a philosopher. He's the founder of the Himalaya Rescue Dog Squad of Nepal, and he's looking for financial support to train rescue dogs, and for emergency vehicles.
More interesting news next month,
John Stephen Veitch
The Network Ambassador
Previous NewsletterKiwi Scrum HomeNext NewsletterOpen Future Home