A Mile stone.. 300 not out.. on LinkedIn

When I first started using LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com) about a year ago, most of the active members were having 500+ contacts. Gosh.. these are fierce networkers. I remember those days not long ago, LinkedIn contacts were stagnant at 18 for quite some time. Several thoughts were going in my mind. Where do I get more contacts? how do I increase my network ? and so on.

Just then I remembered my old case of visiting cards. They were packed and stored in one of the eight luggage bags (four suitcases and four bags). Last week the search operation began and found the visiting card case. Opened and counted the visiting cards, there were 758 cards to be precise in six small boxes, from people I had met in the past ten years. Most of them may not be with the same company or available at the same e-mail any more. Suddenly I felt light.

Started adding people I met (from my cards) and not met from LinkedIn (from Answers)... Surprisingly my responses opened a new avenue to grow my network. I started receiving responses from answers and receiving invitations from those read my responses to join their network.

Now I feel motivated to accelerate building my network to engage and make it mutually beneficial.

Social networking

Earlier I used to manage hundreds of visiting cards as I used to meet lots of people through various forums and institutes. Now I seem to manage more of the contacts on my social networks on LinkedIn, Xing and Plaxo.

As a working professional, How long should one spend on these social networking sites a week?
1) < 1 hour per week
2) 1 -3 hours per week
3) > 3 hours per week

Let me know how do you manage your social networks?

Launch of PRISE - Custom Search Engine (Alpha)

As a Software Engineer I searched on Google for Software Engineering resources or information on web and I end up loosing time and effort and more importantly disappointment.

I came across this Google Co-op and its Custom Search Engine (CSE). Google's CSE provides a tailored search experience, built using Google's core search technology, which prioritizes or restrics search results based on websites and pages that are specified, and which are tailored to reflect Software Engineering and Process Improvement.

Tailoring is a magic word for many process improvement and software engieering professionals like me. When google offered to tailor web searche, why not make my and my fellow software engineering professionals save some time and effort on Google searches.

Here you find PRISE (PRocess Improvement and Software Engineering) CSE Alpha
http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=003453698661311018511%3Ahg2yhtikzzw

I plan to release fully on 24/Mar/2007.

Please do provide your feedback.
In case you are interested in contributing to this effort, please do send me a note, I would love to have some company here.


Have a great time.
Gupta