It's all good so far

I am in discussions with family about an online family business presence. We have mineral interests in East and West Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Florida. Some of the initial transactions are over 90 years old. Maintenance of and access to public records leaves something to be desired. Record searches are done manually. Those used to doing these paper archiveological digs are retiring. The new generation of land persons are used to doing all their research online.

So we are discussing setting up a family partnership profile and providing a history lesson about our historical involvement, our family changes through marriages and deaths, heirships, and successions.

This has me thinking about our meta selves. I imagine most of us have more than one online profile. One for the social networking, one for professional networking, an internal company profile, one for volunteer organizations and perhaps others.

I custom tailor cover letters in response to opportunities, trying to showcase different areas of talent as the position may require, to present the most favorable picture of my skills.

Those researching me are likely wading through various layers of data. The picture can vary with the skill of the researcher. How much data is out there? How much is public? How far back does one look? How does one interpret what one finds? Will their impression be colored by a particular incident, a point in time that we have moved past. Will they see how we have evolved and how we continue to evolve? How is my college grade point average pertinent now that I have been out of school for 30 years?

We need to be aware that our net self, if not greater, is at least different from the parts that we put out there. I am glad we are teaching situational awareness, and teaching to review reflect and evaluate actions as well as activities.

This entry was posted on March 7, 2013 at 10:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.