One of the marvels of the Internet is the ability for anyone to create a Web site, blog or social profile without any knowledge how the programming actually works. My hat goes off to the programmers who make this happen. You, my coding friends, make the rest of us look and feel smart, at least until we break it and have to call or e-mail for support.
A side effect of the self-publishing phenomena is that sometimes those Web sites, blogs and social profiles that we labor to create are left to flounder on their own in a sea of similar online spaces. Anyone looked up their Friendster profile lately? Ever write a blog for a class? It may still be out there, too.
The SPJ Virginia Pro Chapter has a few disjointed online spaces as well, but we’re merging them into a few key links. Please bookmark the links listed below, and if there’s an older page or profile live on the Web that we missed please forward the link and let us know.
Web site
In the coming days our old Web site will redirect to The First Word, the blog for the Virginia Pro Chapter. This will be the main Web site for the Virginia Pro chapter. Not only will this be your resource for chapter news, information and interesting stories and links from contributors, the blog site will be further developed to include more resources and information to help you in your career. (There are also a few design tweaks that need to be made.) Be on the lookout for the changes, and in the meantime you can keep up to date with what’s going on right here.
Facebook
Somehow we ended up with both group and fan pages on Facebook. There’s just a lot of love for Virginia SPJ. Looking at the pages it makes the most sense for us to keep the group page and close the fan page. If you’re not a member of the Facebook group please join and let your colleagues know as well. This is a great place for us to share daily stories, links, photos and happenings in our newsrooms.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is all about career and networking so join the group and talk about what you’re working on, send a note to members if you need help with a story, and share information about local networking opportunities. I’ve also seen a couple of good examples of folks who use LinkedIn for their online portfolio by posting links to articles and multimedia projects. Not a bad idea!
SPJVA Today 