Here’s a link to the section of Linked in that explains how to select the widget button you want to add to your blog. Click on the Promote Profile link on the page that this link sends you to.

The widget allows your readers to jump into your Linkedin profile in case they want to network with you more directly beyond commenting on your blog posts. You have your choice of a few different button styles so see what you like, copy and paste the script into your site, and see how it fares for you.

If you haven’t set up a Linkedin account go ahead and do it now. You’ll be amazed how quickly you’ll catch up with old friends and colleagues. I’ve already hooked up with a bunch of my fellow Tuskegee University alumni.

I’m waiting to be approved by the Toastmasters International, INROADS, AfroSpear and Entrepreneur.com groups. Click on my profile icon in the left sidebar next to this post. That’s where you can see all the detailed info you can add for friends and potential professional contacts to refer to you or even refer you to others.

I still have a bit of work to fill mine out but check out some of my contacts and see their online resumes and other key info they think is valuable for others to know. This is by far the best online networking tool I’ve found.

The only issue is that Linkedin doesn’t seem to be allowing new groups to be created at this point. Not sure why but the link says they are working on making their groups database more efficient searchwise. Hopefully they will get it together soon. In the meantime the only method to join a group is to go thru one that any of your contacts happen to belong to.

The Linkedin crew’s efforts to reformulate their search algorithm is no stumbling block though. Sign up today and tinker with your new online community this weekend.

I figured out a new trick! I feel like such a smart guy. Guess what? Did you know you could embed YouTube clips into your e-mails the same way you do on a blog? It’s just a code copy-and-paste. When you send the e-mail, your recipients will see the middle of the bracketed “object” embed link hi-lited.

When they click on that hi-lited part of the embed link, it will open a browser window. The recipient just clicks on the play button in the center of the video just like they would on your site. And voila!!! Instant movie. In case you’ve never played around with YouTube and you don’t have a blog or website to embed video clips into, just test it out in an email to yourself. I sent this one and another in an e-mail to my Toastmasters club yesterday. Look at the grey section next to the video clip. The computer code under the “Embed” title is the part you copy and paste.

Send yourself a link and click on it to verify it works correctly. Then share your favorite stuff with all your e-mail buddies. You should still sign up for a YouTube account so you can create your own personal library of music and movie shorts of all sorts. Then you can become true YouTube junkies like the rest of us.

With the ongoing national fuss over rising fuel prices, here’s a link from my home state providing some good behind the scenes analysis. Thanks to my home girl Tia Gigger for the email link to the story. Not everything is a conspiracy, people. It’s just good old world scale supply and demand.

The real problem is the politicians acting like whusses when environmentalists throw fake science in their faces. More refineries is the answer to the problem! But that’s another post for another day. Read on.

I have learned a lot about my ability to lead during the past year as president of my Toastmasters International club. It’s the first time I’ve really been comfortable moving a group of people from one point to another. Well this is a truly significant year for us. We are the Talk of the Town Toastmasters Club and this year we are poised to become a President’s Distinguished Club for the first time ever in our four year history.

If you’re not familiar with the program there are three levels of club achievement based on club members doing their part to earn points towards the Distinguished Club Program along with the accompanying recognition. There are ten possible points related to members learning basic and advanced speaking and leadership skills. By documenting where we intended to be at the begining of the club year we actually are getting there.

Five points makes a club Distinguished, seven earns Select Distinguished and nine points is the highest club honor of all. President’s Distinguished. It takes a lot of forward planning to make sure you achieve either of the goals.

In addition to working the master plan we have significantly improved our membership building. We haven’t always been consistent with it over the years but as those of you who run other groups know, new blood is the life blood that sustains any organization. We have definitely elevated our efforts on that front and it’s showing the benefits in all other operations of the club. It takes twenty members on a roster to qualify for the club recognitions and the fruits of our labors are finally beginning to show.

It has helped increase the number of individual speaking certifications. More people are intentionally focused on being Competent and Advanced Communicators because they have put it on the plan. They are working on becoming better Competent and Advanced Leaders because they have put it on the plan.

Our two pronged attack of membership building and speaking & leadership improvement has us on the cusp of a historic day. There’s no stopping us now and I have to admit I’m feeling pretty proud of myself and the club. Listen. Do yourself a favor where ever you live on the planet. Join your nearest Toastmasters International club and change your life forever.

Wayne at the Electronic Village has a good “things that make you go humm” post. Take a gander and drop a comment to him.

Well at Auburn University it’s PHED 1520 but whatever you want to call it I’m learning golf this semester. In addition to taking my toughest computer science course in summer school I’m also working on the relational side of re-entering the workforce in a couple of years. From now on whenever somebody says “Tournament time!” I’ll be saying “Where do I sign up?” without hesitation. This is actionism at it’s funnest and most practical application. It’s all about professional enhancement and good times.

Last week we covered the last of the important sections in The Rules of Golf and this week we did a pre-test review. The test is tomorrow and the rest of summer we’ll spend our time on the course. Here’s where we take our class at Indian Pines Golf Course in Auburn, Alabama.

All you college students need to take golf as a gym requirement, an elective or a GPA booster. No matter what field of work you go into it can only hlep you. For-profit, non-profit, government, doesn’t matter. Just register for the class. Some of you who aren’t athletic or some who are but don’t think golf is a “real sport” are wondering why you should waste your time and money on it. Because, for your professional aspirations, this game isn’t about being able to win or even play well. It’s all about being able to participate, to prove yourself as a team player in the office, to become an effective networker internally and externally to your place of employment. You’ve heard of “the meeting after the meeting”? This is the fun version of that.

It’s how you make yourself known outside the office, when you get to know your managers and other superiors on an informal basis. Not only are business deals made company to company on the links but nice projects and assignments are handed out on putting greens and fairways on a regular basis. That’s the relational part. Just think about it. People always like working with people that they already like, right? Well bosses like giving out plumb prizes to employees they already like as people too. I can’t make it any simpler for you than that.

As for you folks currently in the workforce - WHAT ARE YOU WAITING ON!!! No, seriously, go to your nearest public course and sign up for a class. Give them a call and find out how much it costs. Save a few bucks from the next couple of paychecks if you need to but stop making excuses not to do the obvious, people. This is one of the best self improvement classes you can pay for that will help you get a raise as quickly as anything else you’ve got going for you. And you’ll probably wind up liking it and start playing for fun on your own or with friends. It’s a great thing all the way around.

It’s not as exhorbitantly expensive as you’ve been told either. Go to your favorite local discount/everything-you-need-in-one-place store and buy the cheapest set of clubs you can buy. Don’t get the high end stuff and wear out your wallet. You haven’t learned how to play yet. Develop the basic skills first and when you become a project manager or receive that department head promotion - because not only are you smart and qualified but you and the boss are pals - then you can go the fancy route.

Are you still on the computer? C’mon, pick up the phone and sign up for that class with the local golf pro. See you on the course soon.

After completing a rather rough spring semester I finally got a chance this week to get back to giving speeches in my Toastmasters club, the Talk of the Town Toastmasters. After nearly a year of focusing on rebuilding the club I now have some time to work on advancing to my next public speaking certification. I’ll tell you more about what I’ve learned about leading and building a high performing club in another post. Today I’ll share my speech from this past Tuesday night.

I’m working on my Advanced Communicator Bronze pin. That requires me to work in two advanced manuals which each have five speech topics. There are fifteen advanced manuals to choose from. After you have achieved Competent Communicator status, you have your pick of any of the advanced manuals once you decide that you’re ready to move forward and become top notch at the various levels of advanced communication. The Competent Communicator designation requires you to give ten speeches out of your very first manual as a new Toastmaster. The Advanced Communicator Bronze, Silver and Gold also require ten speeches each, in addition to other requirements for the last two levels. You just get to pick your own interests from two of the five-speech manuals of your choosing.

Getting back to May 20th though, I gave my second speech from the Humorously Speaking manual. I decided to reflect on my childhood and how my next door neighbor Mr. Fred Fairbanks made his contribution - among many influences - to my going into the world of technology. His daughters were my earliest friends and it was a lot of fun reflecting on those years while writing and practicing the many drafts of this speech. So here it is. The text to my early childhood misconception on why friends’ dad was such a well dressed train driver…

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My Friends’ Dad is a Train Driver

Exposure is everything when it comes to our perceptions of the world. Let me give you an example from my life. When I was a kid I always wondered why my friends’ dad was such a well dressed train driver. If you were like me when you were younger you always understood an engineer to be a train driver, right? Well, unless you grew up in a middle class environment and had lots of neighbors and family friends in white collar professions, you probably had no idea whatsoever that engineering was also a technical career. Well, my next door neighbor was one of those types of engineer. But initially, I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why he went to work every day in a shirt and tie with a brief case.

Madame Toastmaster, fellow Toastmasters and guests, I guess I figured, “Hey, maybe the train guys like to dress nice like everybody else when they go to work.” (wait for laughter) That’s right. In my young kid’s mind I simply made it make sense to me. You know how you hear a song on the radio the first few times, never catch all the lyrics and make up phrases so that it makes sense to you every time you sing it the wrong way? That is exactly what I did with Mr. Fairbanks’s job. As far as I was concerned, he went to work, changed into his overalls and engineer’s cap, drove trains all day and then came home every night like all the other adults in the neighborhood.

Now, what did I know about trains and rail yards? Apparently, not a thing. But he was obviously a well dressed train driver. Of course as I got older and began to learn more about professions and careers and what adults really do for a living I also became more aware of what Mr. Fairbanks actually did for a living.

He was one of those military veterans who had parlayed his technical training into a post military career in the defense industry. I could tell you more about that, but Homeland Security agents might start popping out of the woodworks and take me away if I reveal too much, so we’ll just leave it at that. (wait for laughter)

I can tell you this though. He did help groom me into the engineering profession in his own way by teaching me how to repair lawn mower engines. And who knew that I would actually wind up working for Briggs and Stratton years later? If I had any patience as a child – and I’m sure I was showing early signs of ADD back then – I would have hung around his back yard more often and become more proficient at working on car engines. But what he did teach me was a sufficient spark.

My professional path started at the General Electric Co. where I learned to design appliance components. From there I moved on to planning their assembly in the production factory a few years later. It was around that time that I had a pretty good inkling that I was really more interested in pure science than engineering. I won’t bore you with the differences between the two but suffice it to say that mechanical engineering wasn’t as creative a profession as I had imagined. And the companies that I worked for over the years didn’t allow for much – O.K., ANY – creative latitude.

Remember now, I was the kid who thought my friends’ dad was a train driver so I had plenty of imagination and loads of creative energy. Even back then, at the GE of the 90’s, I was designing simple web pages with the basic Internet technology available at the time. That’s when the Internet and web first became available to the public back in ’95. But, because of my duties at that time, I never really had the opportunity to apply it there.

That same sense of creativity from years ago inspired me to go ahead and follow my passions. In fact it helped me to change direction and truly dedicate myself to the creative path. Today, I am pursuing the artistic and technical together with the chance, among other things, to program web applications, wouldn’t you know? These days the master plan is developing just as I had envisioned years ago. God knows it took long enough. But it’s all due, at least to some degree, because of my initial thought that my friends’ dad was a train driver.

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I had a blast giving this speech. From my evaluations and my comfort level at the lectern after such a long absence I can tell I’m improving. You should work on your speaking skills too. Not only will it begin to open up new opportunities for you but you may well find yourself moving up the ladder at work just because you communicate better than everybody else in the office, in the factory or where ever. Find your closest Toastmasters club, contact them for meeting time and make a visit to their next meeting. You absolutely will not regret it.

Here’s an interesting Associated Press story from WSB-TV Atlanta’s web site posted May 9th. Props to my SIAC conference competitor for a good read.