• If your PLN can be used to help professional development post-course?

Through the conversation between Amber and Jesse, we can see that in the healthcare industry, social media such as Twitter can help people who are not in this field open up healthy dialogue, especially during the pandemic, social networks are flooded with a lot of false information. Ā Professional doctorā€™s account timely dispelling of rumors eases peopleā€™s nervousness. However, for doctors or nurses working in this industry, they will prefer to read peer-reviewed articles, which really helps them update information and expand their horizons instead of social media ļ¼ˆā€œwhen suddenly people feel that comfort behind a keyboard that they are an expert inĀ  even thought they truly arenā€™t qualifiedā€ ļ¼‰. But my opinion is a little different from Amber. Although I also read professionally published articles, for a business student, social media platforms can help me get to know some ā€œrealā€ businessmen instead of cases in Ivy publishing. Either small and medium enterprises or the worldā€™s top 100 companies will share some successful experiences on the Internet. If I have a chance to know a local businessman in Vancouver or Victoria from Twitter, I may visit his company and learn his success methods face to face.

  • Can your PLN be relied on to open professional opportunities and on which platform does your emerging expertise get good exposure?

PLN is a good platform to open up professional opportunities. For technical talents, recruitment platforms such as LinkedIn or indeed can help us be discovered by more employers. Many headhunting companies also look for the professionals they need on social platforms. As a medical student, if you are about to graduate and your social account is popular with lots of followers because of sharing medical-related knowledge, there is no doubt that you will have a greater chance of being hired than classmates.Ā  According to Giudice, Carayannies and Della Peruta,Ā  there is no doubt that the role of knowledge in the development of society, economy, the countries and all institutions from the information society to the network society is due to the existence of ICT (information and communication technology) (2013). Knowledge and information have begun to be regarded as strategic economic resources, such as factors that determine competitiveness. Many countries have invested heavily in information and communication technology as well as in intangible assets, such as education, research and development (R&D). Those investment help developing countries improve knowledge-based industries ļ¼ˆGiudice, Carayannies & Della Perutaļ¼Œ 2013ļ¼‰. If you have an idea or a semi-formed product looking for investment, a crowdfunding website is undoubtedly a good choice. Publish your ideas and projects on crowdfunding sites such as kickstarter, and then share the link on your PLN with Ā hashtag ,Ā  which may help your emerging expertise get good exposure.Ā  Or if your idea posted on PLN that gets enough attention, technical companies will take the initiative to find you and invite you to participating in development.

  • Can you leverage your PLN in future endeavours? With consideration to the reading and video interview, how do you ensure that you expand your PLN via social media platforms into spaces that may be outside of your comfort zone?

On the one hand, for a manager, PLN can narrow the distance with employees, help managers understand employees’ feedback, and discover creative ideas in social media. On the other hand, they can see different insights in social media platforms, because in the physical world they live and work in the same environment for a long time,Ā  their thinking and actions may fall into limitations and stereotypes.Ā  Social networking can always help people find their shortcoming. An example is IBM’s most typical application of social networking-“Innovation Jams”, which is a large-scale network discussion forum attended by IBM employees, partners, and customers worldwide to promote corporate innovation. Based on some of the ideas presented at the meeting, IBM has initiated a number of new initiatives to improve current products and business methods (Haniotis, 2011). To expand PLN via social media platforms into spaces that may be outside of our comfort zone, we need to recognize the advantages and disadvantages of the Internet. There are always talents who are more capable than us in various fields in social platforms. We should remain humble to receive new ideas and doubts, and constantly find accounts that are worthy of our attention (validated source) even though it is not related to our professionals but help in other fields. Meanwhile, we also need to stay sober and not be easily influenced by opinions on the Internet.Ā  We can accept different insights outside of our comfort zone but always build own core values in PLN that could not be shaked.

 

Reference

A Global PLN ā€“ Supporting One Another ā€“ Course YouTube ChannelĀ https://youtu.be/RiWaXNfnHAg

Del Giudice, M., Carayannis, E. G., & Della Peruta, M. R. (2013).Ā Social media and emerging economies: Technological, cultural and economic implicationsĀ (2014th ed.). Cham: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-02490-5

Haniotis, J. (2011). Innovation jams: Lessons in agile product development — an experience report. Paper presented at the 223-229. doi:10.1109/AGILE.2011.49