Linkendin and me

Sitting on the Beloved Back Deck with the small roar of the waves in the distance, the sun has covered itself with a blanket of purple clouds. The Indigo Girls strum guitars and harmonize in the background. For the first time in months, I wear a tee-shirt because Fran’s thousand shades of green are playfully throwing the ocean breeze on me. Winston, the little gay dog, plays at my bare feet dangling from the High Top chair as Goddess snores underneath the Hibiscus plants. I am intensely working on my Linkedin account. Actually I have two and I’m trying to figure out how to eliminate one. Years ago I started one when I was still at Union Mission. I’d always in front of the curve ball of the digital age having bought the www.unionmission.org domain way before we had any idea what web pages would become. When Linkendin came, I immediately jumped on board. Then I left Union Mission and the Board Chair who chooses to remain anonymous … Jerry Rainey …had all my passwords changed and I no longer have access to my accounts. So there is Linkendin profile showing me as President & CEO of Union Mission which I haven’t been for almost three years now and I can’t do anything about it. Of course, I created a current one which is true testimony to what I’m doing these days. “Why in the hell should anybody care about Linkendin anyway?” I asked Liz Wu at a meeting in Memphis last week. Liz was with her boss Mac Prichard and Prichard Communicaiton Portland, Oregon managing social media for companies in several states. Pretty with long black hair and of Asian descent, Liz looked at me as if I were an idiot. This is understandable as I was wearing flip flops, faded blue jeans and the same tee shirt I’m wearing now (Blue Moon Party at Marlin Monroe’s made by our friends from Latitude 32. Sarah and I celebrate our anniversary once a month at Marlin’s under a full moon because that’s when we got married.). Nevertheless, she and Mac had to take me serious because I was introducing them. “Well,” she said as she admired my tee shirt, “Linkendin is important because the business community wants its own social media platform to be professionally segregated from the mass media drive engines of Face Book, Twitter, Google Community and other such venues because business communication is different from personal communication.” I make a mental note to send Liz a Marlin Monroe tee shirt. Mac too! He went to Harvard and isn’t the snappiest dresser in the world so he probably needs a couple. After being educated … and chastised … by Liz and Mac, I’m now paying serious attention to Lindenin collecting a couple of hundred contacts. It’s always interesting to see who accepts you and who isn’t in a hurry or doesn’t at all. It reminds me when I was in elementary school and slipped Beth Morgan, who played Dell Evans to my Roy Rogers, a note. “Do you like me? Check one: Yes? No? Maybe?” (She did but I digress.) “Hey,” Mike Hosti yelling out as I entered Tybee Market to get some things for dinner, “I got your Lindendin request but I don’t know what the hell to do with it. I’m still trying to figure all of that stuff out. It just strikes me as funny. We live two blocks from each other and we’re going to talk on Lindendin?” “Yeah,” I replied shrugging my shoulders while throwing green beans, fried French onions and Campbell’s Cream of Mushoom soup on the belt. “It sucks,” he says. “Why can’t we just get together?” “Its business,” I reply, swiping the credit card across the digital transaction. “I know,” he says while shrugging his own shoulders. “Alright, let’s go to work,” he concludes walking away. “Yep,” I say. These days you need every edge you can get. The economy is in the tank and apparently not going anywhere soon. So I’m back into Linkendin and Mike and I are going to communicate … even though we’re only two blocks away from one another.