Joe Christensen began with a presentation about Linked In. His takeaway message: “Be careful what your online presence looks like.” Good advice, especially for students who are just getting started in their careers. A couple of Joe’s technical tips: edit the metadata in PDF files (located under “Document Properties”), especially if you’re claiming a document as your own and assemble the PDF files at “Press” quality. Some useful sites: oDesk and spokeo.com.

Amelia Chesley then gave a presentation on ePortfolios. She uses WordPress and Picasa. A tip from Amelia: when you export images, add a watermark so that others cannot claim your work as their own. She emphasizes the communicative nature of ePortfolios–something we don’t usually think of when displaying our work–and encouraged us to think of our portfolios as interactive and a way to make connections, rather than just a place to put stuff. Men with Pens is an interesting example of a company website/ePortfolio.

Tom Johnson introduced us to Twitter and led us through an interactive session using the tool to share our responses. This was cool! We discovered that the main areas of concern with blogging are time and topic–not enough time to write and nothing to say. His advice: don’t feel compelled to write every day and write short posts. A couple of neat blogs: Keith Saltys “coredump” and Penelope Trunk’s blog.

For the final session, Tom, Paul Pehrson, and Ben Minson held a social networking panel. They discussed their blogs (listed below) and took questions from the audience. These guys are inspirational. They deftly combine their technical expertise with their writing skills to converse about their experiences online. It’s a fascinating world out there. Go check it out!

Tom’s sites: idratherbewriting.com; writerriver.com
Paul’s sites: blog.paulpehrson.com; paulpehrson.com; docguytraining.com
Ben’s site: gryphonmountain.net