My Most Marvelous LinkedIn Adventure

Many of you are probably way ahead of me in this social networking phenomenon. I stay extremely busy, so I've stayed on the periphery with no time to really look into it — till now. Last week, my friend Molly Holzschlag, made a blog post and mentioned LinkedIn. With some of my recent duties completed, I decided to accept an invitation I recieved back in July from Laura Carlson (I told you I was slow). I thought a little networking for new and trusted subcontractors, or possibly some new CSS Chef jobs as a subcontractor, might be in order. I signed up and began inviting some friends and co-workers.

A woman who does some copywriting for my clients joined LinkedIn on my recommendation. In turn, she got a web developer from Atlanta, whom she also works with, to sign up as well. Right — this is how it works — I'm learning. I viewed her profile, including her network. I was startled to see an extremely familiar name — Milt Webb — a blast from the past in an unexpected place. It was a name I hadn't seen in over 15 years, and certainly not in the city where I last had contact with him. Sure — there could be more than one — but it's not a common name.

Back story — Long ago, in a younger land far, far away from the web, I modeled (no, it's not mentioned in my bios :~)). For about five years I walked the catwalk and did photography work in Milan, Atlanta and Florida. In Florida, my favorite photographer's name was Milt Webb. We kept in touch for a few years after I moved on. But life took us in different directions and somehow, we lost track of one another.

I googled the Atlanta Milt Webb, went to his web site, and found that he does product photography along with his web work. Hmmmmmm…that's interesting. I decided to email. It was a simple email. I gave him my maiden name — Stephanie Haupt — and said that if he knew who I was, to please show me. (I hate to give out too much information to a stranger.) Back came an email with this photo attached. Oh my word! (Don't be frightened — it was the 80's.) How ironic that we not only used to work together regularly, but once again we're working in the same field. I was about as excited as I've been in the past five years (that likely frightens those that know me well). My kids came from the living room to see what the ruckus was about.

We spent about three hours on phone call number one — with more to come I'm sure (fifteen years takes a while). What a blast! My husband was rather disgusted that we talked shop as much as we did. But hey — we're geeks — what does he expect? One cool thing I found out is that he's gotten really into PHP. Since I'm an XHTML/CSS developer, there's always a chance we could work together again some day. He'll set the site up and make it work behind the scenes — I'll style it and make it marketable on the front end. Sounds strangely familiar.

Obviously — I'm pretty sold on this LinkedIn thing. ;~)