ETP Manalapan

Last Thursday evening the Jersey Shore Networking Group met in Manalpan NJ. It was a great networking event with excellent sharing of valuable information!

Below is the schedule of upcoming JSNG meetings which are free and open to the public. They will be conducted from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM on,
Meeting dates for 2009 have yet to be established yet.

Below is just a sample of the unsolicited testimonials we've received!

Yesterday was the first meeting that I have attended, and I must commend you (and the rest of the group) on a very enjoyable and worthwhile meeting. Having others to support you (and to interact with at a professional level), whether you are "in between assignments" (as I like to call it), or "currently working at", is wonderful since it gives the individuals a new perspective on alternatives possibly available to them , by hearing what others are going through in their lives.
Stated by Batsheva Salberg Ph.D., Industrial/Organizational Psychology.

Thanks very much for arranging everything. You did a fantastic job.
Stated by Michael Procopio, Web Services Developer.

Stated by Bob Zimel, OD and Learning Executive.

Invitations will be sent in a week or two for our next meeting in Toms River. If you have not received invitations in the past but wish to receive them for future meetings. Please send a request to be added to the invitation list via E-mail to JerseyShoreNetworkingGroup@gmail.com

LinkedIn wants to assure they keep the spammers out of their system. Thus they put in place many safe guards. One of them being the "I Don't Know" you button in response to receiving an invite. It only takes 5 people to click this button to get your account locked. To get your account unlocked you'll need to click the link at the button of a LinkedIn page for Customer Service and submit a question to plead your case. Realize that once you are this situation you are at LinkedIn's mercy and it will take a while, probably days, to get a response.

Once you do get unlocked you're going to need to be extremely careful as they may not unlock you a second time. Once unlocked, you may even want to withdraw old invitations to reduce the risk of getting locked out of LinkedIn a second time.

When you wish to establish a connection on LinkedIn. It would be best to contact the person outside of LinkedIn (in person, telephone, email) and ask if they are open to receiving a LinkedIn invite. However, if you've lost touch and don't have any way of contacting the person outside of LinkedIn you should customized the text of the invitation. Realize that you may remember the person better then they remember you. Thus it is best to send a personalized message reminding the person how you know each other. You certainly shouldn't write a book, but you should mention not only the company, school or organization, but also some details to help refresh their memory. For example, I once worked on many different projects in a company with over 100K employees. Somebody saying they know me from that company might not help me recall them!

Another best practice is to never use the default canned invite message. Doing such seems to indicate an impersonal attempt to establish a connection, that might not to develop into a warm trusted relationship. Considering that you did not take the time to personalized your invitation.

LinkedIn makes it easy to import your E-mail address book from many different sources. Once LinkedIn has your address book you can broadcast invites to all or a selection of the imported list. This is how people often get their accounts locked, because they don't realize the number of people they have in their address book that are just acquaintances that will likely press the "I Don't Know" you button. Although this is import feature may be a quick and easy way to build your network on LinkedIn it is very dangerous due to the risk of getting your account locked, but in addition you're blasting a generic impersonal message to everybody as well.

It may be time consuming, but connecting with one individual at a time in a personalized custom manner is always a best practice of professional networking. The investment in time is well worth the rewards you'll receive in the future, from your warm trusted network.

You may also wish to review a blog post on this topic by my friend Jason Alba at "I Don't Know You (OUCH!)".

Since many professionals are on vacation during August we won't be meeting this month. However, starting next month we'll plan to meet on a monthly basis and will alternate locations between the Monmouth and Ocean counties of New Jersey. Thus you can attend which ever meeting location is most convenient for you, but of course you are welcome to attend both if they wish.

More details will follow in the weeks to come. But for now please reserve the following dates on your calendar if you are interested in attending future meetings of the Jersey Shore Networking Group.

The September meeting will be on Thursday the 25th in Manalapan, NJ.

The October meeting will be on Tuesday the 21st in Toms River, NJ.

The November meeting will be in Monmouth county NJ but the date and location have not been planned yet.

The December meeting will be on the Tuesday the 16th in Toms River, NJ.

The Jersey Shore Networking Group is a local chapter of the Empowering Today's Professionals Network. Each of the planned meetings listed above are free and open to the public. The purpose of our meetings is to offer career management educational and professional networking opportunities for attendees. These meetings will be from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM with a social gathering for extended networking afterwards at a nearby food and beverage establishment.

If you wish to receive invitations to our meetings, please send email to JerseyShoreNetworkingGroup@gmail.com and include the following:
1. Your first and last name.
2. Your E-mail address.
3. Town of your residence.
4. ETP Network member status: Yes, No or don't know.

By Thomas E. Kenny

Even if you are not a road warrior, many professionals have busy on the go lifestyles. To help support that fast paced lifestyle, almost all of us have cell phones. Below I describe three free services for your cell phone, which can help make you more efficient and knowledgeable while on the go.

Does your cell phone plan charge you for every call you make to directory assistance? If so, consider using 800-466-4411. It is a toll free call that will provide you with free automated telephone directory assistance, thanks to Google.

Have you ever had a question when you were not in front of your computer, that you know you could answer via a Google search? A few weekends back, a friend was telling me that his doctor advised him to take potassium supplements. Being interested in a natural solution my friend stated, “I wonder how many milligrams of potassium are in the average banana?” I said, well I don’t know but we could ask CHA CHA. I then dialed 800-224-2242, and asked that question to their automated system. A couple of minutes later, I received a text message with the answer. My friend was truly amazed!

Last but not least. Do you find you make to do lists, to help you keep track of tasks you need to remember? Well you might want to consider using Jott.com. Once you establish an account with your cell phone number, you can dial 866-568-8123. Their automated system will ask you who you want to Jott, state “myself” and then the message you want to Jott. It will transcribe your message and send it to you via a text message. You can configure your account to also send your Jott message to your E-mail account, that way you don’t have to log into Jott to retrieve your messages. If there is a transcription error you can always listen to the recorded audio, to recall what you wanted to remember. However, Jott has many other features such as:
1. Send your transcribed text message to a group of individuals.
2. Have it read your favorite blogs to you.
3. If you use Gmail you can have Jott read new E-mail messages to you if you are willing to setup some advance tricks.

Well there you have it, three great free services for the busy professional. If you wish to see an online video demo of these services, you may want to view
this link.

At last week's meeting of the Jersey Shore Networking Group I discussed the importance of Email signatures as a form of electronic business card. Thus you can imagine my surprise when my HTML signature was no longer being appended!

This was due to functionality being removed from the Firefox browser add-on known as "Better Gmail2". This feature was removed in version 0.5.3.2 of that add-on and was placed in a new add-on known as the "Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures" add-on.

There are two ways that you can assure your Emails from Gmail will contain your HTML signature.

Either continue to use versions 0.4 through 0.5.2 inclusive of the "Better Gmail2" add-on. Meaning you will need to assure that you never upgrade to the latest version or you can perform the following steps.

1 - Upgrade your Firefox browser to version 3. The new version of Firefox has some very nice improvements. However, note that not all add-ons support Firefox version 3. Thus if you use any other add-ons besides "Better Gmail2" you'll need to carefully consider this option.
2 - Update the "Better Gmail2" add-on. This is accomplished within Firefox via clicking on Tools, Add-ons and Find Updates.
3 - Download and install the "Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures" add-on.
4 - Click the Gmail's Compose Mail link, click the Edit Signature button, paste your HTML signature and click the Save Signature button.
5 - Enter your email address and some text in the subject line and click the Send button to test that your emails contain your Email signature.

If your instance of Firefox has already updated Better Gmail2 to version 0.5.3.2 and you do not wish to upgrade to Firefox version 3. You may click here to download the 0.5.2 version of the "Better Gmail2" add-on.