Month: September 2006

More LinkedIn

I am getting sucked into that thing called LinkedIn that I blogged about the other day. Yes, it is THAT good. If I were to measure the “goodness” of it, it’ll be just a bit under Flickr and just a bit above YouTube.

I was surprised to find out that not all features are available, or, should I say, so obvious on the first day of usage. The best of them, the real cream, comes on the second, third, and later days.

On the first day I’ve just created myself an account and filled in my profile with all the places I worked at and studied at. I also found some familiar people, got connected to them, and browsed through their contacts. That about it.

Bigger LinkedIn network

On the second day, when I logged in, I was presented with a whole bunch of news. First of all, there were news about my contacts. Some of those people updated their profiles, some quit jobs, some found new jobs, some added more contacts. I saw it all in a nice and clean way, with links for further information.

Then, further down the page, I was shown some statistics about my network. I was told how many people joined my network, how it expanded, etc, etc. And I had a link to even more statistics, which I will talk about in a minute.

Then, I had something totally unbelievable – three vacancies that met my specifications. All three in Europe, which I mentioned I was willing to relocate. And all three of these vacancies came from my own network of connections. That is not the complete “out of the blue”, but via people who I know via people who know… How cool is that?

Another sweet thing that I saw was information about new people entering LinkedIn, who studied in the same places that I studied at. It just said so in the most plain and simple way possible – “There is 1 new person from Intercollege”. And it was a link to that person’s profile. Wow. Really, really, nice.

Remember that statistics link I just mentioned above? Well, of course, I couldn’t pass it by. Click. Now I got even more stats, but, again, they were all nicely organized and presented in the most useful way. These new statistics told me everything about my network – locations, industries, growth and expansion, etc. I was also provided with links to profiles of people from my industry, nearby industries, remote industries, fast growing locations, random locations, new people from my own location, and so and so forth.

I think I’ve spent half of the day wondering around, learning about all the features and looking through all the people… Now it was time for more action.

I’ve sent invitations to many people, explaining to each of them what LinkedIn is and why they should join. Almost all of them did, by the way. Some of them just created a profile to “get rid of me”. Others proceeded to add their own contacts. My network is growing fast, as you can see from the image above.

With all these new contacts I started noticing that there are several ways I can reach new people, that I am connected to them via several of my contacts, and that some of my contacts know each other without even me knowing it. Even though, they live and work in different countries. Amazing!

With all that activity, introductions started to fly around. Introductions are this great feature of LinkedIn, which allows one person to ask another to forward an introduction to the third one. That is, if person A knows person B, who knows person C, person A can ask Person B to forward a letter to person C, so that they can get connected. It sounds a bit confusing, but it is extremely logical and very easily done at LinkedIn.

And so on, and so on, and so on…

It seems that features are endless at LinkedIn, and somehow they are all packed into this very intuitive and cool looking interface, which is a breeze to use. I’m almost speechless. I’m divng deeper and deeper into LinkedIn… C’mon you guys, dive with me!

Puzzled. Pissed off, puzzled and confused.

I saw something really strange today. It was bad. Very bad. And strange.

I was on my way for a little walk after a minor beer session in Ship Inn. It was around 2:30am. I was walking by Kanika complex, listening to some blues podcast. Nice music, nice weather, nice mood…

Suddenly I see this crowd of kids. There are about 20 or 30 of them. They all are about 13, 14, 15 years old. They run around like crazy, but in a group, shouting something in Greek. There’s plenty of excitement, although it was easy to say that something stupid is happening.

Then I see this young woman, she’s probably 25 or so, running around, chasing kids. Oh, well. Having fun, aren’t ya? Nothing special, so I am passing by, listening to my blues podcast.

As I go by, I look at the faces of some kids, and something tells me that something wrong is going on. These guys, they are smiling, but in a bad kind of way. Uh-oh. I stop, I turn around, I look.

The young woman is obviously drunk. She’s a tourist. She’s barefoot, she has a leather belt in her hand and she is chasing these kids trying to hit them. Hmm…

Now I see there is this other dude. He is about 25 or 27 years old. His a big guy, and he is obviously pissed off. I watched him for about three seconds – he was doing two things at the same time. He was chasing the kids, also trying to hit them, and he was trying to catch and calm down that young woman. Or so it seemed.

The dude grabbed the woman and put her down on the grass, jumping at the crowd around… It didn’t look good. Or right.

So I go through the crowd, straight to the dude and ask him if he needs any help. The guy is all tired, sweaty, and seriously pissed off. He says “Yeah! I need some help, man! Those motherfuckers, they attacked my wife…”. At this point I am thinking “What the fuck?!”.

The young woman jumps up, and shouting all the dirty words I’ve ever known starts chasing the kids again, with the belt in her hand. Kids are again amused and entertained. That was really stupid. With that belt, it was easy to make some serious damage…

Anyway, I ask the guy if the girl is drunk or on drugs or anything. He says she’s drunk. And that she wasn’t doing anything wrong, they just came to the beach for a sweem, but they were just talking, when these kids came around and started shouting offensive words, and grabbing his woman, and touching her, and doing all sorts of things they shouldn’t have been doing…

I looked around to assess the situation. Basically, there was nothing much to assess. From my very limited street experience, I’ve learned one small thing – there is no way to fight a crowd. You can fight one on one, two on two, or whatever. But when there is a crowd, and noone in particular – that won’t lead anywhere, except to a worse situation.

I look at the dude, he is pissed off, and he is not thinking straight. I asked him where are they staying. He said that they are tourists and that they are staying Kanika Pantheon Hotel. Good. It’s just around the corner.

I suggest the plan of action. First, we get to the hotel. Second, we call the police. He agreed. Now, at this moment, we had to hurry a bit, because everything was rushing out of our control (that is from as little control as we had over the situation). The young woman, we, and those kids – all are running across the seaside street, back and forward, and back again. That’s not the best idea of time spending, especially considering the from Friday to Saturday night, with most drivers speeding, and many drunk. Plus some small stones started flying around… Kids are having fun.

The progress towards the hotel is very slow. It’s either the dude is getting pissed and starts chasing the kids. Or the young woman gets off with the same goal, or we lose the shoe, or the belt, or something else. But overall we are moving forward.

Suddenly we see this police car driving by. It is traffic police, but what do we care. So we shout, whistle, and make lots of noises. The police comes back. We tell them what happenned. They don’t seem to be very interested though. They asked us if the woman needs an ambulance. We declined. They said: “We are going to drive around the block, to check things out”. What??? To check what out? But they didn’t even bothered to listen or explain – they just left. And we never saw them again.

Finally, we made it to the hotel. The kids were all still around. They kept the distance, but they were still aggressive.

These whole situation got me so pissed off. I mean, c’mon. What is this? Cyprus was always one of the safest places on Earth. Everyone was safe, especially the tourists. OK, there were some minor accidents or fights, but those usually happen near pubs or discos and all parties are as drunk as it can get.

But here? In Kanika, which is like the center of the city. And the kids were sober. And they were kids. And there was the whole crowd of them. And they attacked a woman. Who was with the guy. What the fuck is going on?

I can understand when bad things happen on a football match, where the time and place is pre-arranged for bad things to happen. But here? Is it like the whole generation is screwed so badly? I don’t understand…

While we were making our way towards the hotel, the young woman was repeating one phrase over and over and over again: “I hate Cyprus”. “I hate Cyprus”. “I hate Cyprus”. And it was the first and only time in my life, when I didn’t feel like discussing…

Weight update: 2’s compliment

Please forgive another pan in the title, I’ll explain myself.

I rarely post about my fight with extra weight. That’s because the dynamics are a bit down now. Things happen slowly, but they still happen.

I’ve been fighting with the 103 kg mark. I got it pretty easy, but then everything just stopped. I would go up a kilo, then come back, then again. And so on, and so forth. But that’s OK. Many things happen in waves for me, so that was a period of between waves.

Yesterday I got a confirmation that I am winning over my fat. I left the gym weighting 102.9 kg. Not a big difference, but it was the first time I saw 102 on the scales display. (that 2 is where I got the idea for the title – word play for compliment and 2’s compliment)

Also, I have to say that measuring just kilograms won’t always provide you with a good picture of what’s happening in reality. Muscles are heavier than fat. You can be loosin gone, getting another, and your weight will remain the same, but your sizes will change.

That’s exactly what was happening to me. I was seeing the changes. My belt needed one less hole. T-shirts were getting bigger. And stuff like that.

Today, as a proof of concept, I wearing my old new green pants. I bought them back in 2000. I wore them just a few times, before I got too fat. They were hidden in the closet ever since. They are quite comfortable now.

Once again, a big ‘thank you’ is due to everyone who provide me with support and encouragement. That helps a lot.

Get LinkedIn. Now. Seriously.

In this age of blooming Web 2.0 applications and social networks it is easy to miss Yet Another Start-Up &trade (aka YASU, let my Greek-speaking friends forgive my harmless pan). Some people managed to walk by Flickr and not notice it. Others, are still using browser bookmarks, instead of Delicious (or Furl, or …). It happens.

For me, such a miss was with LinkedIn (Thanks to Alexey Yudichev for fixing this) . LinkedIn is a social network of professionals. The professions don’t matter – anything from accounting to IT works just fine. When you join LinkedIn, you have a few things to do straight away.

First of all, you should built your own profile. That’s pretty much like writing a resume, but much easier. You just click through to add your education, experience, awards and certifications, interests, etc. There is no need to do everything at once. You can always edit and update it later.

Secondly, you should add some contacts. Contacts are other people that you know. They might already be using LinkedIn (you can easily find out), or they might not, in which case, you’ll need to invite them (via a handy form, that can do batches at once).

Thirdly, you should promote yourself and your contacts. LinkedIn has this extremely easy way of adding and requesting recommendations.

Doing all those things, you build a network. You are at the center of your network. Then you have people that you know directly. Then you have people that people who you know directly know directly. People get connected. And that is all possible without using a Nokia phone, if you know what I mean.

Here is a little image that shows how fast and how large can your network grow.

LinkedIn Network

It says, that I’ve only added five contacts. Those the people that I know directly. (Of course, I know more people directly, but these five happen to be either using LinkedIn or joined upon my invitation.) Those five people have added some people that they know – happenned to be 27 people. And those other people have added people that they know. Overall, the number of people that are networked to me in this way is more than 2,300.

Now, getting a closer look at those other people, it is easy to notice that I have suddenly became linked to people in different industries, of different professions, in different parts of the world…

So what?

Well, LinkedIn, in this manner, brings together people who know how to do their job (professionals), and those, who are looking for people who know how to do their job (employers).

By the way, if you an employer, or looking for professionals for some other reason, there are a whole bunch of tools available for you, ranging from a simple search, through advanced search by titles, locations, etc, to job listings.

This post is getting too long, so let me just end here. Or almost here. I’ll just provide you with the link to my LinkedIn profile, and an urge to go to LinkedIn website and really check it out. Register, create yourself a simple profile, and add some people to your contacts. You’ll see how useful and virally interesting that stuff (or should I say staff?) is. Really.