Earlier today I delivered a presentation to colleagues at the University entitled “Managing your professional identity”. As the first of our Web Sessions the aim was to raise awareness of the extent of our digital footprint through the use of web tools and technologies.

With a particular focus on social networking and blogs I talked about the importance of being aware how much information we are placing in the public domain and how that could potentially be used. Many people use these sites without understanding the implications of sharing such a wealth of personal information with the rest of the world which is a concern.

I was pleased with the turnout (particularly as it’s a new initiative) and was encouraged by the questions at the end which further enforced by view that we can and should do more to raise awareness to our colleagues.

Speaking about the negative side to new technologies/sites is always a worry though as I (and colleagues in Web Services and beyond) see great value in the range of tools now readily available to us. Therefore I ended the session with a positive… they’re great, we all use them ourselves yet we proceed with caution. If you’re fully informed these tools can really help you extend your professional ‘reach’ and prove extremely beneficial… but more on that at another session.

Unfortunately we didn’t get the opportunity to record the session as we’d hoped but the slides are available on slideshare: