iVention and LinkedIn Profile Change
Written by Gloria Metrick on . Published as written. It may not reflect how these systems work today.
Just minutes before making this blog post, I changed my LinkedIn profile to include my work with my newest customer, iVention, LLC. Normally, I don't put customers in my LinkedIn profile, so let me explain why I suddenly changed my policy on this.
Normally, my customers aren't anyone's business unless a potential customer has asked for a reference and that reference agrees that I can give out their name and contact information. Competitors don't need to know who they are and I protect their privacy. That's my normal policy. All people reading my profile need to know is that I do work with customers using the LabWare LIMS / ELN and the Thermo Fisher Scientific SampleManager LIMS / LES, for example, not my specific customers.
However, iVention, LLC is a special case. Here's why:
- Conflict of Interest. When software vendors contact me to work with them on basically anything, they usually want to know which OTHER software vendors are my customers. This is the easiest way to tell any other software vendor that might contact me that I do have a strong relationship going with iVention, LLC. As usual, I'm not going to pass along information from one vendor to another but I like to make it clear that I do have other software vendors as customers. That way, anyone who is truly uncomfortable with that can avoid me.
- Publicity. The business relationship between GeoMetrick Enterprises and iVention, LLC is rather public, anyway, and will get yet more public as I start writing blog posts for them. So, it just seems easier to declare the business relationship right in my LinkedIn profile so that it will be yet that much more obvious.
- GeoMetrick Enterprises still going strong. For anyone thinking of poaching any of my other customers, just forget about it - GeoMetrick Enterprises isn't shutting down. I want to be as clear as I can that I'm not dumping my current customers, not getting rid of the services I now provide, not closing down my business - I'm just adding a new and exciting customer that needs services that are much different and more varied to my other customers.
So, while I've contacted my current customers to tell them that nothing changes for them, I don't want the rest of the industry to think I'm suddenly abandoning anyone or currently dropping any services.
Gloria Metrick
GeoMetrick Enterprises
http://www.GeoMetrick.com/