Why I shut down my LinkedIn account

Sent in my year-end review of the magazine and book publishing industry article to Writer's Digest yesterday. I spent most of the weekend immersing myself in publishing news archives, emerged with my head stuffed full of mergers and acquisitions, launchings and closings.

But the main topic of this Blathering is to explain why I have shut down my LinkedIn account.

As some of you may already know, LinkedIn is a business networking system that relies on establishing connections with trusted contacts to expand one's professional network. I joined a few years ago because I was curious and supposed it might be useful. It wasn't; I suspect I'm not in the line of business that best makes use of this sort of service.

Instead, I received an increasing number of requests to connect from people I didn't know or didn't know all that well. During Inkspot, I interacted with hundreds of people I had never met or would ever meet, so I was hesitant about declining straight out in case I had worked with them before. Sometimes I would write back and ask something like, "So, um, how do you know me?" but this was an added hassle and also a bit awkward. Where do you draw the line, after all?

It was also clear to me that some of these requests came from people who didn't know me at all, but were collecting contacts like business cards. The more contacts they had, the less I trusted that these contacts were people they knew. The cartoon at the top of this page is probably a more legitimate basis for a LinkedIn connection that most of connections currently in the system.



I suspect that many in the LinkedIn system DO have at least one person on their list they don't know very well. Which undermines the system, of course, because then what's the point? That ONE person can then link to other people -- may be linking to hundreds of people, in fact, that THEY don't know very well, who also become part of your "network of connections." And then at some point it doesn't become all that different from the so-called Friends list on Myspace, where some users indiscriminately add as many names to their lists as they can, whether they know them or not. This is fine for purely social networks like MySpace, but undermines the whole trusted professional connections idea behind LinkedIn.

I'm sure LinkedIn works for some people; it just isn't worth the hassle for me. Last week I got a request from a total stranger that was forwarded from 3 or 4 connections down the line, asking for advice on how to get an agent. I already get 5-10 requests of this kind a week asking me for advice: how to get an agent, where to send a particular manuscript, how to get published, etc. I admit I have to ignore most of them, or use form letters to respond. There are already so many good resources online answering these types of questions, but it takes take time for me to have to look these up, time I could be spending on my own writing. Although my tendinitis is mostly healed, I still have to be aware about how much typing I do each day. And more than half the time that I do help the person, I never get even a brief "thank you" in return.

So I explained to this stranger that I couldn't really help her, that I got my own agent through a writer friend who had worked with me on my writing. In response, she sent me a request for a LinkedIn connection. I'm sure she's not the only person in the Linkedin network who felt that one brief interaction warranted a "work connection." I declined her connection invitation with an explanation that I only added people I actually knew and was sorry I couldn't accept her invite...but I'm sure many others would have accepted.

As for the woman, I never did get any kind of acknowledgement of my response or thanks for my time. And THAT's where a lot of people miss out on true networking opportunities; if she had responded more politely (responded at ALL), I'd be more likely to remember and be willing to interact with her again in the future.

Anyway, that pushed me over the edge re: deciding whether or not to keep my Linkedin account. If someone who knows me wants a recommendation, it's not all that hard to find my e-mail address. Closer friends and associates know my phone number.



(Above photo: A friend of the family's from Japan, Mabuta, created the above origami out of A SINGLE SHEET OF PAPER as a gift for my sister.)

Home recording studio update:

The MOTU 828 works with my computer, but unfortunately it doesn't have MIDI connections (is that the right term) and is not quite as portable I expected. Epi has very kindly let me borrow the 828 for a week or two while I investigate some other possibilities; I want to compensate him somehow if I don't end up buying his 828. Meanwhile, I'm using it to try adding some flute to Seanan's "Dorothy" track. Holy toledo, is this ever easy to do with Garageband. My only worry is that there's too much background noise on the recording; if I turn the other track off and just listen to flute, I hear a faint hiss. I guess I'll let Seanan's sound engineer try to deal with that (fingers crossed). Or if I decide to opt for another audio interface, I may wait to do the final flute track to see if that helps.

Last night I recorded flute for about a third of the song. I'm experimenting by doing this in bits and pieces. I've created two Real Instrument tracks: one to keep and one to experiment with. Whenever I'm happy with a flute bit I've recorded, I move it up to the Keeper track. This system seems to be working fine so far. :-)



(Above: big raccoon that was trying to get inside our green bin last night. He wasn't afraid of me at all.)

Finished reading a ton of books lately, but I'll post about those in a future Blathering.

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He's Dead, Jim!

Above: treats on display in a store at Niagara-on-the-Lake. Ginny, Jeff and I went to see the Shaw Festival's "Arms and the Man" by Bernard Shaw at the Festival Theatre a couple of days ago. Thanks, Ginny!

Speaking of festivals, the Toronto International Film Festival has begun. I still clearly recall when we were in the thick of it all, watching the stars cross the red carpet across the street. We'll be going to see "The Hula Girls" with our friend Craig next week. As I've mentioned before in Blatherings, Craig's an avid fan of the TIFF, taking time off work to submerge himself in film culture and get way too little sleep, sometimes seeing 3 or 4 films a DAY.

This year, he's been asked to keep a Fest Fan Blog for the National Post's Canada.com and will also be posting reports on Reid's server at http://filmfest.tnir.org/.

Meanwhile, I've updated He's Dead, Jim! with my first episode report: The Man Trap. Here's a cartoon I drew for my post:



You probably won't get the joke unless you're familiar with the original series of Star Trek, sorry.

Less than two months until National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo)! Anyone out there participating? If you're not sure what Nanowrimo is, here's a brief description from the site: "National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30." The novel I've been talking about recently began as a Nanowrimo project. I don't think I'll be participating this year; I don't want to push my luck with my tendinitis...but Nanowrimo founder, Chris Baty, is going to be featuring my writing cartoons.

Have a great weekend, everyone!



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I Play Magic Now

Will Write For Chocolate has been updated, as you can see above.

For the past couple of evenings, Jeff has been teaching me how to play Magic. I tried it once ages ago, but it never stuck. This time, I'm enjoying it much more.

Maybe it's because I liked the artwork on the cards. Maybe because of the often amusing text descriptions. Maybe because I KICKED JEFF'S BUTT LAST NIGHT! (ok, with some coaching) Jeff says I had a "fast green deck," a term which I vaguely understand now. Anyway, I'm enjoying myself enough that I'd like to play some more games. I'm also reminded of a great song written by my friend, Scott Snyder, called "I Play Magic Now."

We also checked out Second Life for about half an hour.

Ooo.

Dangerous.

Must. Keep. Away.

Thanks to Rob Wynne for setting up an RSS feed for He's Dead, Jim! (my new Star Trek: TOS blog) in Livejournal. You can find it at ohitrek. I'm having some CSS issues with certain browsers but the Wordpress theme author, Christoph Boecken, is helping me resolve them. His own blog is in German, I've noticed, and I'm sooo tempted to practise some of my German on him. But that might make him NOT want to help me anymore, so I'd better not.


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Technonerdgirl

Above: My post for Illustration Friday. This week's topic: "Run."

Thanks so much to everyone who posted birthday greetings to my father in Livejournal! I've forwarded the list as well as a brief description of who each of you are; he knows some of you in person (like Andy & David), but is probably not familiar with some of your LJ nicknames. :-)

The Pegasus Final Ballot has been posted. Thanks to those who nominated "Sex and Chocolate" in the Best Torch Song category! For those of you not familiar with filk, I strongly urge you to listen to some of the MP3 soundclips on the final ballot page...it's a great way to get a sampling of what's out there. And thanks so much to the Pegasus Committee for all their hard work! Note: Please don't vote if you're not part of the filk community. I'm posting this info to encourage people to listen to the samples, not to solicit votes. Thanks.

:-)

My CSS education is progressing at a decent pace. I'm coming across so many interesting tips and tools and other resources that I've decided to start keeping track of them in a temporary blog, Technonerdgirl, which I'll also be using to try out CSS stuff. If you're at all interested in learning CSS, feel free to visit.



I've learned how to modify the header graphics in Wordpress themes, which was one of my goals. It was dead simple once I knew where to look, of course. I'm learning about background graphics now in my Lynda.com lessons. Thanks so much to Scott Schumacher for his CSS and Wordpress tips and to Chris Pearson for helping get my header permalinks working properly.

A short while back, I complained that there was no one administrative interface that I could use for multiple Wordpress blogs. Scott S. told me about Ecto, a desktop blogging client for MacOSX and Windows. I'm going to try it out.

Writer's Digest has commissioned me for another article -- this one is an overview of magazine and book industry publishing news for their annual Writer's Yearbook issue. I love writing this kind of article because it gives me an excuse to go over Market Watch listings and look for overall trends and highlights of the year. I'd do it anyway for myself, but it's nice to be paid for the effort. :-)

One of my goals this summer was to get back into a regular exercise schedule, and I'm very happy to be running again. It's been nearly two years since we threw out our bathroom scale, and I'm happy we did. I used to obsess about small weight changes. Now I just judge how I'm doing by how I'm feeling overall, and how snug my clothes are.

It's also been nearly two years since Jeff and I gave up cable tv, and we haven't regretted that, either. We still rent DVDs, but the amount of time we spend in front of the television has dropped considerably.

My Hashimoto report is coming soon.

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anniversary

(Above: Jeff and me during our honeymoon in Algonquin Park, 15 years ago. Check out my funky glasses! Photo by Gord Gibson.)

So my friend John Chew has smugly forwarded a Tropical Storm Debby warning. The "smugly" was implied because there was no personal comment added, just the official bulletin from the National Hurricane Centre. But I can imagine his expression as he forwarded it. :-)



Jeff and I have been married 15 years as of today. Jeff has happily pointed out that this month also marks the 15th anniversary of the birth of the World Wide Web. We are such glorious nerds.

To celebrate (our anniversary, that is), we are going to Kaiseki Yu-zen Hashimoto Restaurant (6435 Dixie Rd., 905-670-5559). Hashimoto is one of my all-time favourite restaurants. From what I understand (kaiseki experts out there should feel free to correct me), kaiseki usually consists of a number of small courses, chef's choice, which use seasonal fresh ingredients. Here's a Toronto Life review, and if you're interested, you can also read my Blathering after a visit in 2002.

Drool.

Will Write For Chocolate has been updated. Congrats to Teri Walsh for coming up with Who's Laughing Now, the title of Mimi's new horror novel.



Thanks for all the encouragement after I Blathered about rejections. Tanya Huff's post was especially appreciated:

As a general rule, if an editor takes the time to make detailed comments what they're actually saying is "if you make these changes, I would love to consider the book again, more seriously". They've already given you the commitment of their time but because they're not willing to offer a more concrete commitment, they can't ask. To a certain extent, they're wondering if you're capable of rewriting to editorial demand. Unless you vehemently disagree with the changes they've suggested, it might be worth your while to email them and find out if this is one of those times.

When Sheila first read CHILD OF THE GROVE, she sent me a detailed two page letter explaining what she liked and didn't like about it. I phoned her, thanked her for taking the time and asked her if I rewrote taking her points under consideration would she be willing to read it again. And she said, "Duh."

This observation intrigued me enough that I've talked to my agent, and she's going to find out if the editor would be willing to re-read my manuscript if I revised it to incorporate her comments. Even if the editor still decides to pass, I'm going to look at this kind of rejection letter differently from now on, as a possible editorial test rather than a flat rejection. Thanks, Tanya. :-)

Thanks also to those of you who posted stories of successful fiction writers who have experienced multiple rejections. I'm going to start accumulating these stories on this page, both for my own inspiration and other writers who may be going through something similar. :-)

In my CSS course on Lynda.com, so far I've learned about XHTML, validation and error correction, browser and user styles, different types of author styles (inline, imbedded, linked and imported), conflict resolution in CSS. Both the instructors are involved with the Web Standards Project. Jeff (the sweetie) is also lending me his copy of O'Reilly's Cascading Style Sheets book.

I've been checking out Wordpress more thoroughly, and I'm disappointed by the fact that there currently seems to be no reliable way to administer multiple blogs from ONE administrative interface. This could be a make-or-break factor for me when it comes to switching from MT to Wordpress. Any Wordpress users out there have advice?

10 more hours until Hashimoto...



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