Get Credit for your Web Contributions

It is truly amazing as to the number of dedicated people who contribute to open-source, answer questions on blogs, forums etc. Many people do this outside their jobs on a purely voluntary basis and don't benefit in any way. As a hiring manager at Amazon.com in my past, I have interviewed hundreds of candidates. Many of them stellar, and sometimes we discover that they have been active contributors to the community but there is no mention of it on their resume.

It is easy to see why. It is simply a lack of space to communicate all the bits and pieces of their contributions. The surprising thing is that hiring managers do indeed look for such contributions and indeed, a premium is placed for finding these active candidates.

Now, things are about to change. With Mashedge, candidates can collect all the bits and pieces of their web contributions and organize it as a web book. Then they simply add a link to the Mashedge web book to their resume! Voila. The Mashedge web book allows the hiring managers to dive into the web contributions of the candidate. If the candidate has put in a link to the checkin, they can even see the code! If they answered a question and received hugs, they can see it too. The hiring manager does not have to dig through the web trying to discover their contributions - believe me, they simply don't have the time. They would thank you for helping them do their jobs.

For example, I have put up my web footprint (it is really small) as a web book titled "Kiran Achyutuni" . It is important to name the web book after you so that it shows up in search engine results.

So, I would urge all contributors to open-source, blogs, forums etc to assemble your web footprint as a Mashedge web book, and put it on your resume. That is the easiest way to get credit for your contributions. Who knows, you could get a better offer on your next job. Of course, do let us know if Mashedge has helped you get that better offer.

Here's what you need to do:

1. Sign up for a Mashedge account if you have not already done so. It's free.
   
2. Create a web book titled "your name"
3. You will be taken to a page to "Organize the web book".
4. Add links to your web contributions into the book and arrange the links into chapters. You can continue to add links whenever you please.
   
5. Make book public and add link to your resume/on-line profile. If you want to keep the book private, you can do so. You can share a private web book with specific people if you wish.

Good luck!

Extremely easy way to build web books

We got a lot of feedback from users on the 'Create a Web Book' feature. We are proud to release the new and improved 'Create a Web Book'. It makes it trivially easy to add links, create chapters, and drag-drop the links into chapters. We were proud to note that a 15-year old user created 3 web books using the new interface. Be sure to check it out. Simply click on the 'Create a Web Book' button. Of course, as always, if you have suggestions for making it better, simply use the feedback form available on every page.

Tell a Friend

We have a new feature to talk about. When you log in, you can tell a friend about any web book via the "Tell a friend" feature. You simply enter the email address of the friend, and we immediately send them an email inviting them to come and read the book. It's that simple.

Collaboration and Organization on the Internet

While Kiran, Rekha and I have been working on Mashedge, my friend Dave Liddell (http://www.ridesouth.net/) was writing a concept paper on the same topic. Its a good read and brings out the essence of Mashedge.

Research Portal Abstract
When you research a topic on the web, you search, you read, you study,you dig deeper into concepts which you don't understand, you learn,you correlate, you evaluate information statistically. Hardly ever do you find an article that answers your exact question in this complicated time we live in and if you do, you don't take it as gospel until your cynicism has been assuaged with corroborating information.

Once you arrive at your personal answer to your question, whether that is how much salt you should intake in a day when sweating on your touring cycle through Central America, what do to do when you get bitten by a scorpion, if Colombia is really safe to travel in, what the best camera is for the price when you are primarily interested in semi-professional grade low-light images, or which foods you should avoid when breast-feeding your child when you suspect his or her rash is food related, you add some opinion based on your facts and you reach a conclusion. Then you act on it. You might tell someone else about it and you might not. Most people don't give feedback to the forums they read, post comments on blogs, have a feedback facility(media articles, etc), or update Wikipedia when they find something that they think is right on or they think is rubbish. This is the problem. There is too much garbage to wade through and everyone hasto do it, over and over again. There is no easy tracking of compound problem solutions.

Wouldn't it be better if you could have a place where topics were researched, the conclusions shared, the garbage tagged as such, and the good stuff labeled prime? You might not always agree with the conclusion, but you could come to an understanding of how they got there, and decide if the evaluations were wrong, they didn't dig deep enough, there's not enough info out there, you personally have the answer, or heaven forbid; you agree with them. In any case, it would shorten your time in research and partially cut out the middle-man,the search portal and all the trash to wade through. Augmentation of"stories" or topics would make them more robust, and rating and evaluation systems would cause consensus to float to the top of thepile. Those who are found to have an analytical nature would also be easily found, not from quantity; as most sites do; but from qualitybased on weighted consensus, based on user research integrity.

Socially, contacts and groupings could be made as a sidebar or story organizational / grouping tool.Why doesn't such a place exist? No one has done it yet. Not all that innovative, just a different way of looking at it.

The Solution: A tool that allows you to easily categorize, refer to, correlate, rate, comment on, and present, information on the internet. This data can then be commented on by the researcher, and in turn any aspect of it can be commented on by others. The research in it's entirety can be rated, disputed, augmented with a different "view" or "overlay" and each overlay or the root (original) research block can be rated and evaluated by the public so that the most logical conclusion is presented and reached. A social intellectual competition which feeds into the social networking aspects.