I admit it - I was something of a cynic when I got my first invite to join LinkedIn; I saw it as yet another idea / directory and felt that - although I should be networking - there's a limit to the number of profiles I can maintain, and to the amount of information I should put out there to fade, gently, out of date. But LinkedIn references keep coming up and a handful of people have invited me to join.

When telling the story of how we decided to write our first course at Well House Consultants (it was a Perl course), I describe how I told the first person who asked "look - that's a piece of free software, so who's going to pay for a course?". I told the second person that we weren't offering such a course. And to the third person I said "I keep telling people - there's no demand" ... and a bolt from the blue told me that there WAS a demand - I had three people proving it. Twelve years later, I can tell you that for every three people who ask you about a product that you don't advertise, there will be another thirty who are interested in the product but wouldn't even THINK of asking. And so we wrote our first course ... and Well House Consultants has move from being a £100 'shell' company to something much bigger - training courses, a hotel, meeting rooms, with an operation that's open from 06:30 to 22:00 through the week and a team of staff.

So ... when LinkedIn came up again (it's rather more than three times now!) this morning, I jumped in - took the plunge and entered my details. It does strike me as a system with excellent potential for keeping in touch / getting back in touch with long lost contacts, and for finding new people with whom we share aims and views, with whom we can exchange information, and perhaps work with or train to our mutual benefit.

If YOU are already a LinkedIn member, please visit my public page and feel free to contact me / add me to your connections. I'm not going to start sending round whole loads of invites to everyone in my mail box (I have the uneasy feeling that this would be too closely akin to spamming!) ... but I would welcome a build up of some connections.

If you are NOT already a LinkedIn member, you can still visit that public page, and you'll find you're getting invited to join, like I have just done. And I've joined at the free level; I expect I'll stick to that, but ... who knows, this may turn out to be the one in a hundred of those connections that becomes rather more.
(written 2008-12-30, updated 2008-12-31)

 G998 - Well House Consultants - Newsletter Highlighted Box
  [1011] Well House Manor and Beechfield House, Hotels, Melksham - (2006-12-29)
  [1068] ls -l report, Linux / Unix - types and permssions - (2007-02-06)
  [1132] Well House Manor, Melksham, Art Gallery - (2007-04-02)
  [1237] What proportion of our web traffic is robots? - (2007-06-19)
  [1307] Troy, up state New York - (2007-08-17)
  [1375] Python v Ruby - (2007-10-02)
  [1475] Tcl/Tk - updating your display while tasks are running - (2007-12-16)
  [1521] Evening drive across the roof of Wiltshire - (2008-01-27)
  [1621] Linux and Java Course in London - (2008-04-24)
  [1629] A short introduction to our courses - (2008-05-03)
  [1751] Public Training Course Dates until July 2009 - (2008-08-13)
  [1843] How many cups of coffee? - (2008-10-17)
  [2050] Why the Pony Tail? - (2009-02-21)
  [2125] We have lost a regular business guest - (2009-04-10)
  [2222] A (biased?) comparison of PHP courses in the UK - (2009-06-07)
  [2385] Reading all our recent news from a single source - (2009-08-29)
  [2400] Are you wanting to learn PHP? - (2009-09-08)
  [2520] Global and Enable - two misused words! - (2009-11-30)
  [3168] Web Sites - Subject to Advertising Standards from 1st March - check your sites - (2011-02-13)

G907 - Well House Consultants - Recruitment and Career Development
  [116] The next generation of programmer - (2004-11-13)
  [198] A new skill may not be quick and easy - (2005-02-02)
  [253] Finding the right holes - (2005-03-21)
  [285] What career opportunities for web designers - (2005-04-20)
  [389] Tough Love - (2005-07-25)
  [408] Can an older person learn a programming language - (2005-08-10)
  [503] 10 years C# knowledge please - (2005-11-23)
  [585] Looking for Python staff - (2006-02-01)
  [587] Job vacancy - double agent wanted - (2006-02-02)
  [722] I'm answering a job applicant - (2006-05-16)
  [729] Career development advice - (2006-05-23)
  [751] Want to be a technical trainer in the UK? - (2006-06-08)
  [759] Watch your Google profile - (2006-06-13)
  [849] Staff Meeting - (2006-08-30)
  [1963] Best source to learn Java (or Perl or PHP or Python) - (2008-12-28)
  [2109] Why most training fails ... - (2009-03-30)
  [2255] Past PHP delegates / others - coding help needed for next 3 months - (2009-06-23)
  [2294] Can you learn to program in 4 days? - (2009-07-16)
  [3440] Research is exciting. But should routine be automated? - (2011-09-14)
  [3490] How not to call when job seeking ... - (2011-10-20)
  [3594] Back to Uni - (2012-01-26)
  [3740] Looking and Learning - even on Holiday - (2012-05-22)

Back to Background to the TransWilts Train Fiasco

Previous and next or Horse's mouth home

Forward to Review of 2008

Telling Google which country your business trades in
Plagarism - who is copying my pages?
Search Engines. Getting the right pages seen.
Review of 2008
LinkedIn - Thrice Asked, and joined.
Background to the TransWilts Train Fiasco
How much does a train service actually cost
Why hasnt the fiasco been put right
Index Card System for Game Characters in PHP