It is now nearly nine years since MEI's Minerals Engineers group was initiated on LinkedIn, and membership has grown steadily, passing the 10,000 mark last Sunday.
Although this is good news, I sense that LinkedIn is probably not the force that it used to be. A few years ago, with fewer members, there was a continuous flow of discussions but these seem to have dried up a little of late.
This is a pity, as one of the things that I stress to the younger people in our profession, when I open MEI Conferences, is the value of interacting with people. Conferences are, of course, ideal for face to face networking, but indirect interaction is also important, and the various social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are ideal for this. And, personally, I greatly appreciate comments on the various MEI blog postings; we can all gain by pertinent and incisive discussion.
So, as it is New Year, I appeal to all of you out there, particularly those of you just embarking on hopefully long and illustrious careers, to resolve to get your name known by networking whenever possible, whether face to face or by using social media.
Twitter @barrywills
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Great reminder. We all need to play some role in a dialogues about mineral processing.
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Bob
well said, Barry; let me call these as "technical media " rather than social media. I also can not understand why young professionals are shying away from these platforms which are of great value to share technical views; get to know of views and activities of others of our profession.
ReplyDeleteRao,T.C.
Barry: I am the manager of the Gold and Silver Metallurgy Group on LinkedIn and it has grown from 700 members to approx..7000 in the last decade. Just like MEI Blog, the Au/Ag Metallurgy Group seems to have run out of questions the last year and a half and gone into hibernation… No sign of any revival lately due to the renewed gold mining activity. One problem is that LinkedIn probably likes to retain the members, inactive or not. I would like to try (annual) reconfirmation of membership, like is done for magazine subscriptions. Gus Van Weert
ReplyDeleteThanks for this Gus. So it is not just members of the Minerals Engineers group who are proving to be reticent. I am sure there are many redundant members in all groups, but I am not sure that removing inactive members would necessarily provide motivation for the remaining members to post discussions
DeleteBarry,
ReplyDeletePlease do not remove any names; I am sure the present generation are yet to get used to these technical platforms though they are very active on others; I strongly believe there was a lot of good work done over the last 100 years and persons with experience have a lot to bring those works to light once again so that too much repetition of R&D does not go on.
Rao,T.C.
Hello;
ReplyDeleteI volunteer as social media ambassador for MetSoc of CIM usually at COMs. This experience is priceless. I do live videos chatting with attendees (via FB, LinkedIn Twitter), conduct short interviews with mineral processors (via MEI Online), and regularly post on LinkedIn. I believe that networking, direct/indirect interacting with others, sharing views, making new friends, and learning from your peers are so important especially for us, the young professionals. Also, I believe that it is necessary for the technical societies in our profession to have such positions on social media platforms.
A. Deniz Baş