Last night I was in Sunnyvale attending a presentation on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the premeire business networking site.

The presentation was hosted at Intero Real Estate by Mitchell Levy of HappyAbout. Jason Alba author of I’m On LinkedIn – Now What??? was the featured speaker.

I got to chat with Jason before the horde arrived – he was expecting about 20 to 30 attendees but 120 showed up. That’s Silicon Valley for you – everyone is networking like crazy. Some estimates are that over 70% of people in tech in Silicon Valley use LiinkedIn.

It turns out Jason is from Salt Lake City. I moved out here a year and a half ago from Park City, UT. Jason and I talked a bit about Utah, tech, LinkedIn and other social networking platforms. I found him to be insightrful, practical and helpful. He has an easy-going manner and a wry wit.

Jason’s presentation was straight-forward and focused on four things we could do to start reaping immediate benefits from LinkedIn. He then answered questions for over an hour.

The lobby-shot picture was taken when the meeting room was already full. Thus, you see people in the last shot having to bring additional chairs into the room for the presentation.

I had a great talk with Lois Steiner of Facilities First, a professional facilities solution provider. We talked about the business potential of having an industry wiki on the Facilities First website and a few other ideas for increasing web presence and traffic.

It was really one of the best events I have been to in a while – well worth the drive down and the time invested.

Mitch interrupted the meeting for a five minute break so everyone could catch the lunar eclipse. At the end, he even allowed anyone who wanted to get up and make any announcement they wanted as a means of promoting networking between the attendees.

In the good old days - prior to 1990 - parents were often faced with the "sex talk." The sex talk was that parent/child bonding experience that happened around puberty when parents could no longer ignore the fact that their child's body was entering the adult world in spite of their position on the issue.

With the Internet, I'm not so sure the sex talk is needed much anymore. Kids these days seem to know more about sex than any previous generation. They certainly have more access to graphic information on sex and everything else under the sun. And though they have more information access, what's still seems needed is the maturity talk; the use your brain talk; the think smart talk.

It seems like just yesterday, I knew more than my parents and wished they would just leave me alone so I could have my life and not theirs. In hindsight, like most, I see a few places where listening to my parents might have saved me some grief.

Parents in my generation used to warn us about talking to strangers. The suburbs were a happening phenomenon and most of the population was no longer growing up in Mayberry. 

The Internet gives us the freedom to talk to some really strange people and it gives strangers some ways to find out more than they probably should about our children.

This has created a need for a whole new parent/child talk - the Internet Safety talk. ConnectSafely is a resource for helping all of us deal with the issues associated with the Internet, Social Networking and wierdos.