Synchornize Our New Google Calendars with Your Desktop!

Having a Google Calendar to embed on our web site makes it much easier for members to follow chapter events. And because it stands alone as its own calendar, it won’t interfere with your own personal events, appearing as its own color and vanishing if you remove the synchronization.

It’s even better if this feature syncs up with the calendar you use at work or at home.I’ve done this for a while now, and you don’t realize how awesome it is until you have it.

If you have an Android phone, Google Calendar is probably your default anyway. But for your computer, iPhone, or Windows phone, you’ll need to take extra steps. Fortunately, they’re pretty simple. We have tutorials for each below…

New SME.org: Initial impressions

I’ve been playing around with SME.org’s new site, which is based on software called Higher Logic. It includes both blogging and social media functions, as well as online management of your membership, etc.

So, how are they doing? Forthwith, a quick initial scan of the good, the bad, and the ugly. As we delve deeper into the platform, we’ll update this review…

Picking Our Twitter Account Name

Our chapter has just set up a Twitter account, and we’d encourage members to subscribe. It’s an easy, no-hassle way to be notified of new events, etc.

In our case, we had an issue that any of you will have, if you go on Twitter: how to set up that account? And how to pick that account handle?

Here’s how we did it…

How Can Social Media Help Manufacturers?

Media Vine Marketing has some preliminary thoughts.

Hat tip to The Society of Manufacturing Engineers – Canada, who posted this on their LinkedIn page.

A LinkedIn/Social Media Primer

Many of our members have heard of social media, and quite a few are probably using sites like Facebook. But are you using these sites professionally?

For professionals, LinkedIn offers better demographics, the absence of non-professional clutter, and a framework organized around careers. SME as an organization has committed to LinkedIn, and if you’re not there yet, we really recommend it.

It’s also worthwhile to understand how corporate HR is beginning to use these sites – including your non-professional social media accounts.

Over to Defense Industry Daily, I wrote “Sharpen Yourself: LinkedIn & Social Networking Sites” to help professionals understand what’s happening, where the pitfalls are, and how to use sites like LinkedIn as a way to build their careers.

Hello world!

Well, what else would a good techie use for their first post title?

This WordPress blog is the beginning of a new platform for our newsletter, and also for our members. It will contain all of our future newsletter articles, as well as professional thoughts that share our members’ deep experience; links to interesting stuff from SME Technical Community groups and the web in general; discussions of chapter operations, mission, and vision; and more.

The blog will change over time, but at its core, it’s meant to be a platform for you, as well as for us. You can build your ties to other members, and your professional profile, by participating in the comments, and by contributing articles – and by letting us know about your blog or Twitter account, if you have one, so we can include it in our blogroll.

If you’re interested in contributing an article to this blog, leave a comment here. We’ll get back to you, and get you set up.