Networking: Exploiting Contacts Since Back in the Day

Networking is nothing new. Even with no concrete evidence to support it, I will confidently make the statement that people have been asking their friends and family for help finding jobs since the days of yore. It therefore makes sense that we're taught the value of networking. Sending us out to hunt and gather business cards, however, is probably the least natural form of networking we could be doing.

If I were someone noteworthy (which I will hopefully be someday), I would be pretty irritated and confused if some self-righteous kids came up to me, handed me a business card and asked for mine in return. Do I have anything in common with this person? Do I have any reason to commit them to memory? If they say they'll email me and I tell them sure, are they really going to do it? To me, it seems awkward and forced, and I'm not going to remember that kid, except maybe as that weirdo whose business card I have and I can't remember why.

Instead, it seems to me that the best networking opportunities are those reminiscent of the days of yore. The times when a friend or family member knows someone you might want to talk to, or when an old boss or supervisor thinks you might work well with one of their friends or colleagues. In this latter scenario, you're approaching your target through someone they know, not just out of the blue. They have a reference point and you have inherent credibility.

I've done a fair share of networking on recent years. In some instances I've gone out hunting and gathering, and in others I've just talked to the people I know.

Hunting and gathering, I've amassed a lot more business cards than I've ever had, largely from PR practitioners who have come to Centennial or been places Centennial has taken/thrown us. How many of these people will actually remember me, though? "Hi, you met me at that intern open house three months ago that had about 60 people in attendance? I was the one with the hair...".

Through people I know, I've come to have a wide-spread net of contacts. Sprouting from my undergraduate realm, I've come to know the editor of the biggest history of science journal, the chief historian at NASA, two physicists, three historians of technology, and two historians and philosophers of biology.

Talking to all of these people, I came with a history and a reason rather than out of the blue with a networking agenda. In my opinion, at least, I prefer the latter. I feel much more comfortable and confident of getting a good connection from it if I meet someone who has a reason to want to talk to me.

Thoughts? Anyone?

(Image: Gemini 6 taken from Gemini 7. Orbital rendezvous is kind of like networking, right? Hey, it's a neat picture! Two crews are meeting in space!)

Blogs from Space!

The time has come for me to directly address the organization my blog keeps coming back to: NASA. More specifically, NASA and social media.

These aren't two terms that I would put together. Then again, I'll be the first to admit that I'm still stuck in the mindset (with good reason, thanks) of NASA being filled with men carrying slide rules and pocket protectors. They clearly don't know what a blog is! It's doesn't really affect them! Of course, it isn't 1968 anymore and everyone knows what a blog is, and it's no surprise that a huge government organization that pioneered the most primitive internet and amazing technologies would exploit such an easy and far-ranging way to reach out to interested parties world-wide.

NASA has a series of blogs relating to different topics: Moonbuggies, DIY, robotics, constellations... One that I found particularly interesting in terms of a NASA blog is one maintained by the CIO of the Goddard Spaceflight Center. In this blog, CIO Linda Cureton moves away from the straight technology and science of manned and unmanned space exploration, and instead maintains a blog that could be by any CIO in any other company. Her blogs discusses NASA as any other business. It's an interesting find, and certainly a good use of social media, but what about us nerds who want updates on missions and a chance to read what the engineers are feeling, seeing and doing as they track probes through the solar system?

Well, sure enough, NASA has delivered on that front, too. The Ares X-I Rocket's progress as it is completed, assembled and tested is tracked in its own blog. This blog features pictures, interviews and news updates about the project. Like any blog, you can follow it or subscribe to its RSS feed - all in all a great way to stay abreast of happenings in mission you might be interested in.

The one area where the NASA site seems to be lacking in effective social media is on the history end. While this may be less important that cutting edge flight technology for most, for those like me it's the most interesting and fascinating part of the organization. There are links to history blogs, such as Today in Space History. This link, however, links to a whole other website, the Encyclopedia Astronomica. And while you can subscribe to the sites RSS feed, it isn't updated regularly. I subscribed to it about nine months ago, and I haven't gotten an update in about six.

This is the only area I would say NASA could use improvement in terms of their social media. While blogs generally focus on things happening here and now (or at least now if you're far from the here), there is potential for a history blog. The National Air and Space Museum is also without strong social media. If it were up to me, I would try and bridge the two organizations. I would love to see a blog that chronicles findings from NASA of days of yore with new research being done at the NASM. Maybe that's just me, though who knows, there may be an audience worth communicating to in space history geeks!

The Ground is Swelling and We're All Sinking

Well, I said it in a recent post, PR is all about using buzzwords, and there's a new buzzword for the day: groundswell.

After some Googling, I came across Lindy Dreyer's blog, and more specifically a post about Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff's book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Media (AKA Jujitsu Manual for Managers). Dreyer uses Li and Bernoff's explanation of the term groundswell, defining it as "a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations".

In light of my recent rampant use of the social bookmarking site delicious, I thought I'd see how well this term applies to me and how I come to bookmark and read the sites that I do.

For those who don't use delicious, preferring to bookmark on their own computers instead of online, the site is exactly as advertised: it's a site that allows you to store and organize your bookmarks. You can attach tags to each site, which in turn allows you to sort your links by subject. By clicking on the displayed number of people who have bookmarked a certain site, you can read anyone else's profile and see what people like-minded to you are bookmarking.

My delicious site is filled with links to branches of NASA, science blogs and information databases. Most of these sites are things that I have bookmarked on my own computer. When I started using delicious, I clicked on a few of my sites to see who else had them bookmarked and did look through other user's profiles. I found some sweet things. I found a site about the history of the Apollo guidance computer and a full book online about Kennedy's choice to send America to the moon (something which I always wanted to write!).

The downside to this, though, is that you're limiting yourself as soon as you click on one of your sites. When I clicked to see who else had bookmarked NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory site, I was looking for bookmarks relating to my own interests. It's hard to make yourself step out of the box and really seek out things worth reading that are new to you. Furthermore (though I think this relies more to books than websites since you're not really paying for a website), how do you know what's going to be good, and what's going to be a waste of your time?

In situations like these, I still rely on friends. I leave the confines of my computer desk and call someone I know who's deeply involved in Physics, or Evolution, or Theatre Arts. I can tell them what I'm looking for and, really, they're in the best position to tell me where to find what I want.

In this way, and so many others, I don't think human-to-human interaction can really be replaced by the internet or other social media means of gathering information. When it comes right down to it, no one wants to waste their time looking for the perfect book or website when they could ask a friend or colleague and start reading it right away.

If you're going to be anything, be ethical

Ethics, according to our friends at Wikipedia, is "a branch of philosophy which seeks to address questions about morality." That's more or less what I remember from reading Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics at various points in my past life as a Classicist.

Fast forward 2300 years. The fundamentals of ethics seem to have grown and spread with technology, reaching into realms Aristotle couldn't have explained even with the four causes. So, how does morality enter into blogging? I suppose if we're going to stay on the side of social media, morality in blogging would be transparency; blogging in such a way that your audience can easily see who you are and clearly understand your purpose. It would be amoral to deliberately mislead your audience.

I'll ask my faithful readers to recall my thoughts on Branding and the idea of online personalities for a moment. I still feel that there's no guarantee that anyone is who they say they are online with sites like Facebook, so how can transparency in blogging be measured, or, more importantly, monitored?

It seems to me you have to look at every blog with a grain of salt. Hope that the author is who they say they are but assume they aren't. Anticipate lies, even if they aren't intended to be malicious.

It's hard to say where the ethical line is in blogging and other popular social media outlets. Is it fair to say that the unethical guilt rests exclusively on the shoulders of the author? Or are we as blog readers involved in the "blogosphere" at fault for falling into lies; are we meant to discern innately who's real and who isn't? Is it really like Homer (Simpson) says: "It takes two to lie: one to lie and one to listen"?

Then again, aren't blogs meant to be an expression of the author, and any level of reality or truthfulness vs. dishonesty is for them to determine. I guess the issue lies more in prominent people who blog: politicians, CEO, celebrities (maybe). But then you'd think it in their best interest to be truthful and transparent...

I can't take an opinion, there seem to be too many variables when ethics are applied to blogging. Sure, I'd love to say that everyone should be open and honest all the time. If that were an inherent human trait I feel like a lot of things would be easier. At the same time, shouldn't we as readers look to sources a little more reliable than blogs for the bulk of our information?

Someone weigh in on this for me... at what point can you it be said that a blog is ethical or not, and how we possibly measure this?

Even I couldn't make a NASA link from this post, so instead I turned to my personal hero, Homer Simpson.

Buzzing Buzzwords

It seems to me that there's a hearty amount of hypocrisy in many areas of PR, and the latest to really get me is that surrounding language used in PR writing. We're taught to keep it simple (to keep it clear, concise, yada yada yada). With those 7Cs of good writing in mind, PR seems to feel the need to put as many buzz words as possible into every outlet.

Web 2.0, wikis, social media, brand, blog, blogosphere, stakeholders, key messages, Gantt charts... these are things that don't exist outside PR, and even some people in PR don't remember all these terms. The reality of the situation, (and this is coming from anonymous sources in the industry) is that people have to learn about these things in school but they'll rarely use them by name in the real world. So why dwell on the proper names if no one really uses them? And in a business built on communicating to the world at large, why does communications insist on isolating everyone not in the industry?

Academic writing is considered too esoteric for the general public to read and really get into. Certainly, not everyone knows what Brahe's Geo-Heliocentric universe looks like, many would balk when coming across primum mobile in a text, and the majority would stare blankly into space when coming across the idea of gimbal-controlled mid-course automatic flight path corrections (to my faithful followers, that's the NASA reference!). But anyone reading these papers can look up these terms.

Why, then, does PR writing insist on using nothing but basic simple words yet allows for the "social media" buzzwords that no one outside the 'industry' can understand? Words that aren't in dictionaries, or aren't even clearly explained on our good friend Wikipedia? Why do we have to assume our audience is incapable of looking up anything that doesn't deal with current PR trends?

(image: Tycho Brahe's Geo-Heliocentric model of the universe)

Web two.. point... oh?

I'm having a hard time reconciling myself with the term 'Web 2.0'. I just don't get it.

Technically, and this is according to Wikipedia, "The term 'Web 2.0' describes the changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aim to enhance creativity, communications, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web."

But doesn't the qualifier '2.0' denote that something is a new and different version of something that came before it?

When flight progressed beyond the realm of Army/Navy/Air Force pilots and grew to include passengers, it wasn't called 'Flying 2.0'. A plane was and still is a plane (although pilots still seem to prefer 'aircraft'). It wasn't until flight moved into a new area, space, that the term spaceflight was used to separate flying in the two realms.

To me, it looks like 'Web 2.0' is just a fancy name given to the natural progression of technology as it enters into the mainstream. Web.20 isn't exactly a new Internet. It's the same Internet, it’s just spread across a lot more places and available to a lot more people.

So, at what point did the Internet become 'Web 2.0'? Did someone sign up on AOL one day, push the Internet over the edge, have a lengthy e-mail correspondence and poof? Suddenly the Internet became more social and interactive than informative?

There are still static websites that don't do anything but let the reader read the page then navigate away from it. At the same time, back in the days of really early Internet, it was used primarily as a means for scholars and scientists to share information from quite a log way away. To me, this is a very interactive use of the Internet, one that’s not that different from the Internet today.

The Internet now, one could argue, is interactive in a different way. But if this new interactive social media Internet is based on things like social bookmarking and instant messenger, I don’t really see enough of a difference between ‘primitive’ Internet and ‘Web 2.0’. All these forms of social media existed, just in early, slower forms. Is it really necessary to denote modern Internet as something entirely different? Do we need ‘Web 2.0’?

So many fish, but which Brand to reel in?

We've been talking a lot about online personalities lately, and the analogy is clear - though though not expressly stated - that selling yourself to an employer is a lot like selling yourself to a mate. You need to find someone who wants the same things as you, that you want to be with, and that you can connect with. Someone who offers you enough incentives to stay with them. Someone you can really 'see' yourself with.

We all make compromises to be in a relationship the same way we make compromises for work. If your significant other doesn't like smoking, you try to quit. If your employer demands that you wear jeans only on Fridays, you start shopping for business casual clothes. When going after a mate, you strive to be their ideal match t get them. When applying for a job, you become the model employee to get it. So with all the different brands we're developing for our professional lives, doesn't it make sense that we'd develop brands for our personal lives?

And doesn't it follow that in this age of social media and 'Web 2.0' that there would be a website to cater to each of your personal brands? Of course! You can choose a job based on what you want, just like you can narrow down your search for a mate based on characteristics - before even searching on a dating site!

Everyone's seen the commercials for standard dating sites like eHarmony, Plenty of Fish and Lavalife. These are the sites that cater to 'regular' people. But there is a host of niche sites that narrow down your search right off the bat. Through Google searching on a lazy Sunday, I found four such sites.

- JDate.com is a dating site for Jewish singles.
- Beautifulpeople.com requires users to apply to the site. Applicants must upload a picture and existing members vote them in - that is, if the applicant is deemed 'beautiful' enough.
- Intelligentpeople.com requires users to pass an IQ Test before they are invited to join. (I even found a neat article about this site.)
- Rightstuffdating.com only accepts users in certain positions from certain universities. They even check your status based on the student/faculty ID number you supply.

Obviously I need to see what kind of people join these sites. Online dating is strange enough, but these niche sites? While I can't join rightstuffdating.com (I'm not a graduate student or faculty member at one of their elite and Ive League universities), I can try for beautifulpeople.com and intelligentpeople.com. I can't help but wonder what's to be found...

Shall I continue on with a sort of social experiment? Can I market one of my brands enough to get into the apparently elite world of niche online dating?

Cattle Call

The idea of developing a 'personal brand' has been a theme since I started this course in September. Our teachers have been promising that during our time at Centennial, we will develop our personal brand and eventually use it as a means to sell ourselves in the field. What, you ask, is a personal brand? That's what I want to know, too.

Self-branding seems similar to the idea of creating an online personality - it's just taking that personality offline and into the real world. Taking the aspects of yourself you are most fond of and most willing to develop, and turning them into your identity. And hey, while you're at it, why not throw in some traits you wish were a little more dominant, too?

But once you've created your personal brand, how are you going to know that it's a brand potential employers will want? And on the other end of the spectrum, what if that personal brand works wonders on your employers but eventually leads to conflict with your peers, co-workers, and future business partners?

Let's return to the Mercury 7. In the early 1960s, John Glenn (pictured with his Mercury capsule, Friendship 7) was the typical All-American - the clean cut, good looking, religious, faithful to his wife Marine. He quickly became the poster boy of NASA by showcasing these attributes at press conferences. But as Tom Wolfe flushes out in The Right Stuff, this all-around good guy brand that won over the American public was a source of conflict between Glenn and his fellow astronauts. NASA executives also found Glenn's good-guy brand to be a negative feature, as Flight Director Chris Kraft discusses in his autobiography, Flight.

So, how are we supposed to keep everyone happy? To keep ourselves safe and neutral, how many personal brands should we develop? Should we become two-sided, reserving a do-no-wrong-never-say-no brand for our employers while using the work-hard-play-harder-super-cool-guy brand on our colleagues? And what happens when we end up in a supervisor position and have employees reporting to us directly? Are we meant to develop a third laid-back-but-gets-it-done-while-still-enjoying-a-pint-at-lunch-with-the-staff brand?

He said She said

I was once given a paper to edit for a history of science journal. It argued that Darwin was entirely sexist for using the term anthropomorphic, man-centered, throughout On the Origin of Species. Darwin's thoughts on women aside, the author's argument was faulty at its core - anthropos is the Greek masculine noun for 'man' as in human or mankind (as a point of interest, 'aner'- is the male root while 'gune'- is the female root).

That was the first time I really realized that English has the huge disadvantage of being without a gender neutral personal pronoun.

I've been reading the IABC book - aka the ABC guide to excellence - and noticed that unspecified individuals are more often than not designated by 'she'. I can't decide if this is a result of the female dominance in the Communications and PR, or if ethics are behind the 'she's. Or if it's some remnant of neo-post-feminism or where ever the women's movement is these days. Either way, I feel like drawing attention to the individual as a 'she' puts more emphasis on gender division which in turn makes it an issue.

And it doesn't have to be. I can't say I've ever felt my gender to be either an asset or a hindrance when applying for a job. If you're good at what you do, you'll prove it. Although, as Sex and the City pointed out, it doesn't hurt to not cry at the office.

Maybe I've read too many history of science texts written by dead guys, or the live guys who study them, who refer to everyone as 'he'. I've never really seen a problem with male dominance in writing. Or maybe it's my years of Greek translating that makes me see a male pronoun as one that could be understood as neutral.

I don't really have a solution - I'm certainly not in a position to change the English language. It's just a thought I had...

So, thoughts on gender division in the workplace?

It's in the suit that you wear

When Miss April Winchester was on a her flight back to PEI for Christmas, she met Lawrence Heartz of Heartz Event Creation. April, never one to miss an opportunity to network, introduced herself as a future PR specialist to Heartz. In the course of their conversation, he revealed to her the true secret of success in PR as he sees it - it's all about looks. How you present yourself can make or break you.

I thought that was an interesting thing to say, especially to an impressionable young PR specialist. Most of us are under the impression that the career comes from the skill set and not the sweater set. To me, Heartz's comment said a lot about the industry.

With that in mind, I had to wonder how important dress is when applying for, say, an internship. It goes without saying that wearing a too small tube top or ripped jeans might disadvantage you in certain fields and that matching the office in which you work is your best bet, but is this really enough of an issue that we should discuss it?

Apparently, yes. I was actually shocked that dress became a topic of serious conversation in class the other day. I never thought that dress would be either important enough or enough of a gray area that it would be a class discussion. Maybe I shouldn't have been shocked. Maybe, since this is such a vital component to our prospective future in the Industry, we should treat our appearance the same as we do any skill we're currently developing into our skill set.

In the 1960s, astronaut candidates applying to NASA were coached in their dress. They were told what colour and height their socks should be and what length their pant hems should be. This way, when they sat down, the right amount of ankle - but never any skin - would show.

What does everyone else think. Is dress an issue important enough to be brought up in class? Perhaps Career Management should be a seven week course - that last week can be devoted to the study and discussion of hemlines? Show the right amount of sock-clad ankle for an A+.

















The Mercury Seven in 1963.

From left to right: Gordon Cooper, Wally Schirra (partially obscured), Al Shepard, Gus Grissom, John Glenn, Deke Slayton and Scott Carpenter.

Nice breaks in the pant legs, and not an ankle in sight.

Just be 'Good on Paper'...

I recently found two (1, 2) great articles in the Globe and Mail.

I'm can't say I'm against 'social networking' sites like Facebook. I'm a huge fan, actually. It's just so convenient when most of my closest friends live in different cities and time zones. It's also a great way to stay abreast of people from your past - I don't think I'm the only person who doesn't keep in touch with their whole high school grad class.

It's the idea and practice of using Facebook to sell yourself to potential employers that gets me because no one puts their real selves on the internet. If we did, we might as well save ourselves the effort and install giant Orwellian TV screens everywhere so people could watch us all the time. No, everyone puts a specific version of themselves on Facebook - carefully chosen pictures, interests, movies, quotes, books... We can even take out the one uncontrolled variable; we can remove the polluting effect of other people by hiding our walls.

I guess it's hard to say that the controlled Facebook profile is any different from the carefully crafted resume, but it seems that back in the day people couldn't hide. References were more important than your status as an active blog-reader. Maybe I'm just a cynic (ok, we all know I'm a cynic), but I'm getting the impression that employers are likely to hire the neatly-packaged socially-active applicant over the more private applicant.

I have to agree with Tossell. The emphasis on online 'self-branding' brings out the Holden Caulfield in me. Or just emphasizes my outer cynic.

Bibliophilia

I've never really had an addictive personality, but my bookshelf begs to differ. As does my amazon.ca account.
In the last year I've amassed a phenomenal amount of books. A lot of fiction, some of it respectable, some of it not. A fair amount of bargain basement recommendations from friends. Twenty of my new volumes - the majority of books in one subject - are autobiographies and a few scholarly works relating to the joyous fourteen years known as the space race.









Now if only I had time and a purpose for which to read all these enticing volumes...