One of my goals this year was to start my own blogs. The idea came to me from two sources. A very good friend of mine said it would help promote myself, my thoughts etc without sounding too preachy! (Anyone who knows me well knows I can go into ‘preaching (aka ‘gyan in hindi) mode very easily!)
The other reason was I started noticing  a lot more people had a blog site, most websites I frequented had it as a top menu bar and what’s more every new website I would look into-for networking, job search etc asked about your website as much as they asked for your resume! I think it’s a great idea..what finally led me to creating one was that it gave me a new avenue to learn more. If I wanted to learn deeper about composting, I would tell myself: ‘I should have that as a blog post!’. ..and thus started a love affair with blogging..
But I must say, besides the actual content creation, maintaining the site itself takes time! I recently moved from blogspot to worldpress and I am still not done exploring all the links, widgets, tools it has to offer…hopefully soon.
About the more part:
So I have become quite the absent-minded professor with papers strewn everywhere! Another annual (recycled) goal is to be clutter free, that way I can move into a smaller apartment in the city! Dream on..but one of the benefits in going clutter free is I get to read all this exciting material I have collected over the past few years from all around the world. I visited the NYU career center sometime last fall and they gave me a list of social networking sites. So for all those folks who thought Facebook, LinkedIn and twitter were the only options, here’s some (a lot) more:
1. Ecademy–Ecademy is a business community founded in 1998 now with millions of users of the site each year worldwide who share knowledge, build their network and grow their business
2. Xing– Another version of LinkedIn; a global networking site. They claim it’s ‘The best way to reach over 8 million professionals from over 200 countries’.
3. Meet-up– I am a member of this site. It’s more local in nature and gives an online venue for joining groups based on special interests and hobbies.
4. Plaxo– An online address book and social networking site. (I think this is not valid anymore!)
5. Naymz– Naymz allows people to find and discover new connections, opportunities, ideas, and information based on their backgrounds and reputations. In that way I guess it’s better than LinkedIn which doesn’t allow you to connect unless you know each other fairly well.
6. Spoke– Spoke allows business people to connect via detailed contact information and professional networking. It allows users to identify, research and access the right individuals at all levels of an organization.
7. Ryze A site that helps people ‘rise up’ by connecting at various levels for various reasons. From their home page: Ryze helps people make connections and grow their networks. You can network to grow your business, build your career and life, find a job and make sales. Or just keep in touch with friends.
Ok..that’s it for today. Got to get ready for work! Enjoy the day
