Bringing all networking together - perhaps here

[Nigel Wyatt]

We all have memberships of other groups and take information from different sites. Tell me your favorites sites, networks and information and I will try to consolidate some of it here.

You can also do some of your own consolidation - you can add "widgets" and "RSS feeds" onto your own page. What is a widget? and what is an RSS feed? you might be asking - don't worry about that for the time being, just tell me what you would like to be delivered here from elsewhere and I will see what I can do.

Regards Nigel

Links from Wikipedia
RSS Feeds - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_feeds
Widgets - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widget_%28computing%29

[Sandra Beale]

I like to use www.ecademy.com and www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk.

Sandra

[Michael Beale]

I use http://www.ecademy.com/ https://www.xing.com/ and http://www.linkedin.com/ also http://www.plaxo.com/

I've a heap (?) of blogs - the most important is http://www.nlp-blog.co.uk/atom.xml

[Ryszard Skarbek]

I believe potential integration between this cafe and Plaxo woul be very useful and could support accelerated growth of thsi forum. Relatively many networkers maintain database of their contacts in Plaxo. Having invitation sending process integrated with Plaxo would automate this forum expansion, to graat extend in my view.

[Simon Raybould]

I used to use Ecademy but no longer - as many people will know there was a ruckus some time ago and many people were thrown out, including me. I was allowed back in, after it was admitted I'd not broken the T&C of the site. However, the way other people were treated was so shambolic and offensive I declined. I'd rather lose work than support the current, disingenuous management.

I now use firstmonday.com for that kind of thing (caution! FM is a fairly robust site). The support there is fantastic.

I also use supportbritain a little, too.

Simon

[Ryszard Skarbek]

Hi Nigel,

apart from the comment on the potential integration between Ning and Plaxo I would also like to share one observation. I am not sure whether the other HRD Cafe "users" see it in the similar way but I have the impression that HRDCafe service is a bit slow. I experienced it on various PCs, working with various configurations, so it's connected with server/backoffice rather with client side. I faced it working from Poland and from Switzerland on both braodband and wireless Internet connections.

Have a nice day

Ryszard

[Nigel Wyatt]

Yes Ning can be very slow - I think it is a result of their rapid growth - I am promised it will get better

Nigel

[Brian T Hunt]

I also used to be a member of Ecademy - got put into their cyber jail once without warning and reason. Arrogant management and a poor quality membership of snake oil salesmen/women is the impression I was left with. Now I mainly used linkedin and find that very good. I also use Amodus from time to time and the yahoo group onlinefacilitation from time to time. I'm a member of the PCG and also use their boards.

Brian

[Richard White]

I like HRD Cafe but one frustration I have with this and also facebook is that when someone sends a friend request there is little information available to me other than a photo and their location. Most of the friend requests are from people I recognise although I seem to be getting getting more and more from people who just send out lots of friend requests to people they do not yet know - a friendly act or just a bid for numbers?

When I have accepted from such people I have never got a message before agreeing or afterwards in response to a friendly message from me.....

Is the recommendation to only agree to friend requests from people you already know?
How do you use HRD Cafe to get to know people?

Best wishes

Richard

[Nigel Wyatt]

I invite people I know or have had some contact with to be my "friend" - I do this to to remind them who I am and to help me remember them. I have had many requests from strangers outside of HRDCafe / MagentaCircle, I have often accepted, thinking - does it matter? I cannot see what benefits such linking gives. Part of the problem is that Ning is based on "Social Networking" rather than "Business Networking". I hope to develop business networking more through the groups.

Nigel

[Simon Raybould]

Hi Richard - been a long time!

I agree with you about the lack of info: my usual policy is to generally accept the invitation to be a friend and then recind it if I need to (only done it once here after some stupid spam about "The Secret"). A slightly easier way of finding information beforehand would be nice.

I'm experimenting at the moment with opening up another tab to look for the person concerned before going back to the original tab in my browser to decide what to do.

S