For heavy LinkedIn users–or those who aspire to be–only.
A primer on the social network LinkedIn and an introduction to Windmill Networking.
LinkedIn is a popular social networking site used mainly to establish professional connections and explore career opportunities and advancement. With 50 million users, it has far fewer members than other services like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter–but, as Schaffer notes, “LinkedIn is by far the biggest social networking site that caters to the professional demographic.” After returning from years working abroad in Asia, Schaffer became a “heavy LinkedIn user,” which helped him expand his “real and virtual networks.” In so doing, he developed the concept of “Windmill Networking,” which involves building up networks of trusted connections, helping others out and reaping the rewards of these connections and favors. The book is a catalog of the basic and advanced functionalities of the LinkedIn network and an explication of–and recruitment tool for–the Windmill Networking technique. Schaffer’s exhaustive guidebook covers everything from self-branding and establishing connections to joining groups and updating one’s status. At nearly 400 pages, The Windmill Networking Approach is so encyclopedic that only the most devoted LinkedIn users will benefit from all of the information it contains (new users might be scared off by the tome’s girth). But the real problem, which the author acknowledges in his preface, is that a book–a static source–can never coevolve at the same speed as the social network it is written about. Furthermore, Schaffer’s advice, when accompanied by caveats like “if my memory is not mistaken” or “I have yet to confirm this,” hardly inspires supreme confidence. Ultimately, the book suffers from an identity crisis–is it a business networking book (replete with terms like “Trusted Network of Advisors” or admonishments to “Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty”) or a book about making the most of a social network? It succeeds more in the latter, but the depth of detail renders it all but inaccessible to most casual users. Newcomers to LinkedIn might be better off exploring the site independently.
For heavy LinkedIn users–or those who aspire to be–only.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4392-4705-1
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Popcorn's ``click'' has nothing to do with either feminist consciousness or the PC mouse. Rather, for the social-trend prognosticator extraordinaire, it defines finding your proper slot in a rapidly changing world. For Popcorn, this involves identifying some new trends and occasionally reminding us how right-on she was with her past predictions in The Popcorn Report (also coauthored with Marigold). How can you click? Popcorn counts the ways. You can click by Wildering (not to be confused with wilding), a kind of fantasy adventure; you can click by Anchoring, or pursuing spirituality; you can click by volunteering.. Popcorn's not one for fine distinctions here—megachurches will do as well for spiritual seekers as more intimate locations. The trend is everything: Just pick one and ride it until you feel yourself click into place. (First printing of 150,000)
Pub Date: April 24, 1996
ISBN: 0-88730-694-2
Page Count: 480
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
A slick, selective, and provocative history of postWW II management from a New Age missionary who makes no secret of his commitment to the arguable notion that corporations exist to change the world—for the better. In his engagingly digressive chronicle, Kleiner (co-editor of News That Stayed News: Ten Years of CoEvolution Quarterly, 1986) focuses on the square pegs and odd ducks who wanted to reform rather than repudiate the commercial concerns or institutions that employed them. Among those whose ideas eventually made at least some difference, he singles out Douglas McGregor and other academics, consultants, and executives influenced by the group- dynamics canon of National Training Labs (the originator of T- Groups, which encourage lower-echelon personnel to participate in workplace decisions). He goes on to recount how Saul Alinsky unleashed activist shareholders against Eastman Kodak in 1967; the resultant movement has provided a platform for hosts of agitators, ranging from church investors and Ralph Nader to Leon Sullivan. On the right, the author observes, economist Milton Friedman helped make a name for himself by insisting that the only social responsibility of business was to increase profits. In the meantime, Kleiner reports, Stanford Research Institute scholars were conducting serious experiments on the performance-enhancing properties of LSD, and NTL held symposia and other gatherings with Esalen Institute, a series of encounters that hastened on-the-job programs addressing gender and race issues. Covered as well are such counterculture entrepreneurs as the millenarian planners at Royal Dutch Shell, establishment moles who, in one memorable scenario, asserted: ``The future cannot be predicted; it can only be seen.'' A welcome if offbeat contribution to corporate literature, one that examines the communitarian possibilities of large multinational organizations rather than their presumptive failings and deficiencies.
Pub Date: May 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-385-41576-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
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