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I’m so very excited about this blog! You may have seen the news on LinkedIn about the newly released ‘endorsement’ function, or maybe you’ve seen endorsements showing up on your LinkedIn News Feed (below), or maybe you haven’t been on LinkedIn this week – Shame on you!

This is something that they were working on while I was there over the summer and it is awesome! Oh and it’s a little addictive.

Anyways, let’s talk about what endorsements are and why you should use them.

First, the what – Endorsements are like mini-recommendations, or perhaps the ‘Like’ button applied in the professional world. Hopefully, you’ve added many skills to your profile, because that’s one key. Once you have skills and expertise listed, your network can then endorse these skills thereby legitimizing your claim of awesomeness.

Second, the how – It’s easy to endorse but there are a few ways to do it. One option is to go to someone’s profile page and endorse multiple skills of theirs. You’ll have to scroll down to their ‘Skills and Expertise’ section. Then click on the ‘+’ sign (or number) to endorse their skills, then your face will show up as their endorser.

What: SlideShare is an application on LinkedIn that allows you to share presentations with your network. You can share everything from PowerPoint to Keynote to documents.

How: The first step is to add the SlideShare application to your LinkedIn profile. To do this you first want to go to “Edit Profile”. At the bottom of the page are your applications and you will click on “Add Application”. Alternatively, you can click on “More” at the top of your LinkedIn page and then “Get More Applications”. When you are on the application page, look for “SlideShare Presentations” and then on the description page you will be able to “Add Application” to either or both your profile and homepage.

Now that you have SlideShare it’s time to add your best presentation! This week at Owen I hosted an Owen Insights all about using LinkedIn and I posted it to my profile. It’s very easy, simply go to your SlideShare application from the “More” menu then click on upload. Once you select a file for upload it only takes a few seconds.

Have you ever wondered what your network looks like? I mean, you have loads of people in your network, but how do you know them and how do they know each other?

LinkedIn labs has a tool called inMaps and you can do just that, visualize your network. It may take a while for that first run (depending on how many connections you have) but it is a great way to look at your network.

Here is a picture of my network last March, you’ll see that I have about four main clusters; Vanderbilt Class of 2012, Class of 2013, Seattle (my friends and coworkers from my time there), and Lab126 (where I interned before coming to Vanderbilt).

And here is my network as of September, you’ll see my clusters have grown and I’ve added one big one from being at LinkedIn (any one surprised?) and one small one that is comprised of people I met while studying abroad in Germany at European Business School.

Graduate students are not typically noted for their fervent school spirit, at least when it comes to athletic events. At Owen, however, we take our Vanderbilt studentship pretty seriously, and like to fling our Black and Gold at stadiums across the country. This weekend, our beloved ‘Dores rolled into Evanston, Illinois to take on the Northwestern Wildcats. Northwestern serves as the Big Ten Conference’s counterpoint to Vandy, as a small, academically focused private school nestled amidst a slew of state school behemoths. “Brain Game” could easily have been the nickname for this matchup, given the pair’s similar scholastic reputations. With the big matchup all set, 12 Owen 2^nd years piled into an RV to make the 9 hour trek to the north suburbs of Chicago.

As per usual when it comes to an Owen outing, no shortage of gusto was put into the weekend festivities, which meant bringing out staple provisions like grills, tents, and footballs, and the serious necessities like a flabongo (Google it), and Eric Atchley’s Personal Guide to Gangnam Style Dancing.

No, we’re not talking about the little tykes the Owen community has been sprouting out since they reached maturity (or in some cases, not as much), but our own Owen students back when they were toddling around at something other than kegs.

With that, we present our first Owen Baby. First person to guess who this current student is wins a prize TBD: