SwordMama’s Plurk Plush Creatures may be found here.

All Plurk related items on Etsy here.

I aim to offer a fresh perspective on the use of this new social media platform for the attendees, many of whom may be interested in leveraging the power of collective intelligence for self discovery and business brainstorming.

Some of my speaking points would include:
- cultivating peer-to-peer relationships
- creating virtual mastermind groups and your personal thought leader advisors
- assessing personal and business ROI (return on investment) of your social media tool

I’m excited to be given an opportunity to share how social media has worked for me both personally and professionally!

Sheila Dee even gave me a cool bio page on the site:
http://podcampaz.org/jane-chin-phd/

Want to share how Plurking has benefited you personally and professionally? Respond on my plurk page for this topic and you just may find yourself profiled in my talk!

Each time I get on Plurk, I gain something useful from participating in a topic started by a user whose timeline I am following, or from reading responses to a topic I started.

(”Plurk to Learn” is my Plurk profile title; thanks, Charles for the mention!)

In Charles’ case, his ROI (return on investment), becomes tangible considering the advice and suggestions he gained from responses to the plurks he started for a job interview. Within a relatively short time, he received tips and suggestions that has helped him gain insight about his interviewers. This type of insight is important to any job seeker.

Could Charles have gotten the same information elsewhere? Of course. He could have read books, worked with career counselors or coaches, researched on the ‘net, and gotten similar information.

The difference is that he didn’t have to spend as much time as he would need. Charles has a young family and time is a precious commodity. He was also able to get tips from a diverse crowd and therefore, the benefit of diverse experience.

Want to see a Plurk to Learn in action? How about tackling a big existential question posed by yours truly?

“Do you believe that each of us has ‘a’ (as in ‘one’) life purpose?”

Hop on in.

POSTSCRIPT: CHARLES GO THE JOB! CONGRATULATIONS!

Payson has, in fact, a prototype – see picture below:

But then I wouldn’t expect anything less than Plurkers – most of us operate at incredible speeds and with outstanding agility.

I know getting permission (in essence, licensing the concept) may be tricky, but I hope Plurk agrees. I already have my eye set on my favorite Plurk critter with the 2 antlers, because it reminds me of my Ugly Doll(R) Dog:

like this idea? support payson’s quest here! why should the fail whale have all the fun?

Here’s what I started out with on July 6:
Karma 60.51
# of Plurks 307
# of Plurk Responses 934
Profile Views 835

Here’s what I have as of today July 11:
Karma 62.10
# of Plurks 349
# of Plurk Responses 1558
Profile Views 1056

I ran a Plurkathon and all I got was this lousy 1.59 increase in Karma!

But seriously… I didn’t do a Plurkathon to raise Karma points. I was experimenting with different ways to engage on Plurk. Some observations:

First I began by throwing out a bunch of questions, and some were picked up and others got 0 response. This led me to try a different approach:

I began to focus more on responding to topics I was interested in. I also began muting many plurks that I knew I wasn’t going to follow or that was really a “lifestream” (i.e. “I am going grocery shopping! I’m picking out the produce! I’m running my credit card through the machine right now!”………… Ok enough with that already, we get it, you are really plugged in online and can use one handed typing while doing everything else with the other…)

I used Private Plurking to engage in more in-depth discussions with specific groups of people instead of opening the topic to public, and…

I ALMOST participated in the tail end of a Plurkshop if I didn’t have a baby diaper emergency that required a bottle of carpet cleaner and about 100 baby wipes or paper towels.

I came away with firm belief that Plurk is a useful platform that at best, generates new ideas (I came away with 18 potential article topics for the day when my baby goes to college and I finally have time to write articles again) and at worst, is a highly addictive online water cooler.

I can’t wait for the next time when I do another Plurkathon!

If you find as many great ideas as i do every day, how do keep track and remind yourself about them so you can actually DO them?

Read the Plurk Page (53 responses so far)

Some tools mentioned include Evernote, Google Notebook, Tadalist, FreeMind, Onenote, scribefire, Instapaper, del.icio.us, pen and paper.

Personally I’m getting overwhelmed by all the TOOLS available, and too many options end up sidetracking me on the actual tasks at hand. I pick one and then stick to it, unless something new comes along that’s so attractive that I’m willing to shift tools. Right now I’m favoring Google Sites, regular notepad, and Google Documents.

(is there another way to launch a website, Mike?)

Mike asks a great question that can be viewed from both a business (”Plurkonomic”) and philosophical angle: we already have a bunch of plurk-related websites cropping up. Why another one?

For Mike, Plurkular is about news, apps, and fellow Plurkers. Although Mike was careful to say that Plurkular is not a competitor to anyone else out there, I think we should be as welcoming to competitors as we are about our own Plurk ventures.

This is because the more people entering a field and the more activity emerging in the field, the more we learn about the potential and utility of the field, and the more ideas we gain from each other in this field. It means the Plurk arena is robust and has high potential!

What better example than looking at Twitter, where talk these days center more around Twitter being down and unwieldy and becoming less user-friendly than Twitter as a power tool in its (pre Fail-Whale-all-the-time) heyday?

I just hope Plurk continues its growth and development, and not end up on the list of FuckedCompany.com (which, by the way, is itself “Fucked”)…

So all you Plurk-lovin’ Plurkaholic early adopter branding guru app developer just your everyday plurkin’ joe or jane,

COME ON DOWN!

(p.s. yes, I own the domains Plurkonomics.com and Twitteromics.com – if you think your business is a prime example of how its life and yours were changed by becoming plugged in to Plurk and/or Twitter, I’d love to hear from you. Email me at plurkaholics@gmail.com or Plurk me @janechin .)

As I’ve noted, I’ve not engaged in conversations beyond 2 Tweets deep at Twitter, and a huge driver of my satisfaction with Plurk is I don’t have to click 10 times over 10 Tweets to follow a conversation.

A recent Plurkshop, for example, alluded to certain internet celebrities who use Twitter for announcements and to get people to visit their websites. Not a bad thing to use for Twitter, but then you don’t get much out of that beyond “hey! I just wrote this! check this out! buy my book too!”

A smart move on Plurk is that it (by design or by accident) creates a TOPIC-centered discussion not a USER-centered discussion because it can get annoying to see overt fawning of some internet guru/celebrity when he or she really has nothing new to say.