Acronym

During the "60 Emerging Technologies" session at the Technology Conference today, speaker Jim Kelly of ASAE & The Center's Technology Section Council said something I had to write down. An audience member had asked how she could convince her board that social media wasn't all personal--that in fact, it could be used professionally.

Jim told her to ask her board members about their face-to-face conversations with other members at association events. "When you meet, do you just talk about the documents in your briefcase?" he asked. No, you talk about personal things as well--and that's an important element of the professional connections you make.

I do think that some teenagers' pages on MySpace and Facebook have been used to create a stereotype that says that sharing personal information online must degenerate into bad photos from your last kegger. Well, to be honest, I haven't been to a kegger since college, but I do have an interest in my professional colleagues' lives. (Just today I learned that a new coworker here at ASAE & The Center is training to be a pilot--which I think is pretty neat.)

Of course, you have to keep an eye on your online presence and make sure you stay within the bounds of what you feel is appropriate. But I don't think that "appropriate" has to mean only talking about the documents in your briefcase.