OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 7-9-09

1993-2009
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
July 9, 2009 meeting

Present: Sharon Solomon, Subbu Murthy, Jeff Reid, Jennifer Curlee, Andy King, Sean Brown, Tina Haines, William Zauner, Jeff Hecht, David Mann, Dave Phillips

The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the presentation material, when available.

Topic: Personal Networking.

Sharon Solomon enjoyed preparing the introduction. She started by defining terms - personal networking, social networking, and the services that support these in addition to email and instant messaging. The most popular worldwide (and dangerous?) is Facebook, followed by MySpace and Twitter (although we were having a difficult time trying to define the value of it!). The most widely used professionally is Linkedin. There are many more! See Sharon’s handout for a more complete list. There are many reasons to use networking, not least of which is when you find yourself “in transition”. Other types of networks include alumni, employment, company, industry, vendors, hobbies, friends, family, etc. When using these social networking tools/services there are issues with privacy and currency of personal information, potential for misuse, and risks. When using Linkedin there are Do’s and Don’ts – take time on the profile, summary and bio to accentuate your strengths, use recommendations carefully. Effective networking depends on your willingness to contribute, and how effectively you use your network to form a personal advisory board. You can use it to create your own brand – business card (with photo), tag line, bio, elevator speak, resume, career portfolio and social network profile. There are many network groups and professional organizations that you might consider joining – see handout for lists, and for reading recommendations and source materials.

Subbu Murthy, USourceIT, said there are many reasons for businesses to use networking as well as personal, including business content generation, market leadership positioning, customer relationship support, customer service support, community building, content monitoring, and decision support. It is important to go with the intension of contributing. He spends 10-20 hours a week networking.

Jeff Reid thanked Sharon for her presentation. He preferred face-to-face meetings to Facebook. He has used Linkedin extensively and finds it very good, and has opened a Twitter account, without much success. He does have a new business card with photo.

Andy King, Exemplis Corporation, also thanked Sharon for a great introduction. He uses Linkedin for business, and suggests that we open OC CIO peer group network on Linkedin. He also uses Facebook daily for fun, communicating with friends past and present. He recommended http://www.cnbc.com/id/31849843 for Social Networking's 'Naked' Truth - Tech Check with Jim Goldman.

Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, thought that this was a great subject, and is a big user of Linkedin. He noted that during the US Open Golf tournament, Ian Poulter used Twitter a lot to keep everyone informed of his actions during rain delays. He questions the value of Facebook but uses it to find friends from the past.

Tina Haines, Meggitt Electronics, said that much to her surprise, she got a lot out of this discussion. She, like Jeff, much prefers the face-to-face contact, and is not convinced of the value of electronic networks, although she sees that Linkedin must be very useful to search people. Based on the state of her company, she is now in transition herself and will have to become familiar with all these services.

William Zauner, JAMS, said that the only networking service he uses is Linkedin. He does a lot of face-to-face networking through business groups and children’s activities, like AYSO, etc. This session has been very useful and he also thanked Sharon for her efforts. It highlighted his concerns about stuff on the Internet never goes away, and so Facebook could be dangerous long term.

Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, echoed his thanks to Sharon. He is on Linkedin and a university network, but is not a huge user – more comfortable face-to-face – maybe it is a generational thing. He repeated his concerns about the younger employees not getting much interface with their management and thus not learning how to become a manager. He is a big user of instant text messaging

David Mann, Word & Brown, complimented Sharon on her presentation. As technology leaders, we are always looking for ways to use technology to advantage, and he has used Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, but not yet Linkedin. He likes the idea of using these network services for business intelligence.

Thanks again to Sharon for the very good introduction and handout.

See you on August 13, 2009 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.