Thing 6 is all about professional online networks (though we have dealt with them a little already).
The main interest for me in this Thing is LinkedIn. I signed up without ever being fully convinced of how I would use it. My profile is fairly skeleton at present (jobs, degrees, MCLIP) and I probably should add some detail. I have more than few groups – I’ll come back to this.
Over time I have connected with a fair few folk – this seems to go in bursts – both in terms of invitations sent and received. I got into the habit of asking people I connected with what value they were finding in LinkedIn – not a single person ever came up with a good reason to be there.
What I have been interested in is the way that the CILIP on LinkedIn seems to have started to come to life. This seems to be in marked contrast to CILIP Communities. I get regular emails updating me on various discussions in the group and some of these draw many comments. I wonder if the LinkedIn group could supercede the CILIP Communities Forum? It has the advantage of convenience (apart from for IE6 people) and neatly links to peoples rich professional profiles. It would be interesting to see how CILIP could build on this participation.
I wonder also if LinkedIn could support something to officially badge people that are currently Chartered / a Fellow or whatever (particularly if we made recorded CPD a requirement of ongoing Chartered status) . In this way employers checking us out before interview would have that marker of professional commitment. It would also knock out those who use the letters but should no longer do so.
Comments
To add a comment to the original post, click here.
You must be signed in to post a comment.
Sign in nowThanks Ben – pleased to be offering something generally worth reading.
I am finding it hard to know where to turn in the torrent of potential reading – I have enjoyed more than a few things I have read but I wonder if future posts without the CPD23 motivation would necessarily remain a priority? Hopefully some good new stuff will bubble up as you say.
Interesting post. I think you’re right that having the group blog is a little confusing (IMO partly because the title of it implies a single author). Maybe if the blog had a little avatar next to each post representing the author, that might make it clearer?
Also agree that keeping personal and professional totally separate is near-impossible.
I have a near-unique forename/surname combo; feel it might be a blessing for branding but a curse for any semblence of privacy/anonymity…
Good point on the avatar thing – I suspect a previous blog template did include this information but at the cost of the post titles showing. No doubt we will change it again in the future.
The title reflects the fact that I think this blog started as one person affair and slowly borged into the present arrangement.
I note from your blog that you are a London based CPD23er – I hope you will take advantage of the event in week 5 (advertised elsewhere on this blog!)
[...] is not a new thing for me. I had a long love affair with Bloglines that I used for a good six years and I have commented already about my current RSS [...]
[...] thing for me. I had a long love affair with Bloglines that I used for a good six years and I have commented already about my current RSS [...]
I haven’t heard of Pushnote but it must have had some decent hype to have you fight to get it working. I’ve been using StumbleUpon sporadically over the last couple of years but I suppose this is more for transferable bookmarks & tags than assigning a rating to things.
I use something called Yoono that embeds in Firefox for Twitter access. It recently had access issues possibly because I use it across home and work but these seemed to resolve when I upgraded. It seems quite good and I’ve tried some of the ‘flash in the pan’ ones.
You have to fight to get rid of it too!
Your post made me smile. I am one of those who have worked in medical education and know the term ‘reflective practice’ and find that it’s almost easier to do it than to explain it!
I’m interested in your hope that CILIP will introduce mandatory CPD; with my Devil’s Advocate hat on for a minute, would you be concerned that in an attempt to ‘professionalise the profession’, it would discourage people from Chartership/CPD altogether?
For me the need is to make Chartership enduringly meaningful both to those in the profession and our employers. Chartership at present is a useful process but a one shot deal. I know you can revalidate but without the push will people do it? Signs point to only a limited level of uptake.
People are doing the CPD anyway – stacks of it. The mandatory element would be the tracking. As a pay off for the small effort of online tracking (beyond the personal value of actually doing the reflection) there should be a public online site that I could point to that would allow employers to verify that I was maintaining my Chartered status. As a recruiter I would value this.
Hi,
I get much more out of the CILIP discussions on LinkedIn than I ever did with CILIP Communities. People just seem to use it more often so it becomes much more dynamic. It’s quite nice to be able to check someone’s profile when they have commented on something too – just to check that they may know what they are talking about! Sarah
RT@ LibrarianGMIT: New useful search engine that returns full PDF scientific articles not subject to access fees: http://www.freefullpdf.com
*Headdesk*
*eye roll*