LinkedIn has been sponsoring internal tech talks with high-tech luminaries for a while now. We’ve discussed opening it up to external software engineers and we’re pleased to kick this off with a panel discussion that I’ll be moderating next week, June 5, in Mountain View. Food will be served. So, just bring yourselves and friends interested in learning and networking.

We will not only have the creator of SCALA, Martin Odersky, here in person but we also have representatives of the most scaled SCALA implementation, which would include Nick Kallen of Twitter and David Pollak of the LIFT web framework.

Given below are further details of the panel and how you can sign up for it.

Panel topic: LinkedIn Tech Talk Series – Going from SCALA to scale!

Date / Time: June 5 (Friday) / noon in Mountain View

Moderated by

Arnold Goldberg – VP, Platform Engineering at LinkedIn

Panelists include…

Martin Odersky – Creator of SCALA / Professor at EPFL
Nick Kallen – Systems Architect at Twitter
David Pollak –  Team lead for the LIFT Web Framework

Sign up for the June 5th Tech Talk here

Fill out the form (link above) with just your (a) linkedin profile and (b) email address. We’d love to open this up to everyone interested, but unfortunately we have only limited seating for the first 100 sign-ups. The last time we put together a similar event we had over 200 RSVPs in a few hours, so please be sure to sign up at the earliest.

Once we hit the limit, we’ll be sending you an email confirmation with details on location. Look forward to seeing you at the event. Questions? Leave a comment.

Over 100,000 LinkedIn users have shared over a million professional news articles with their groups and connections, since we started offering the news sharing feature. We’ve received a ton of great feedback on the feature, with some of our users mentioning how inconvenient it was to participate in a group conversation given the additional step of returning to the news discussion page to leave a comment.

We’re now incorporating some of these suggestions we gathered, starting with the ActionBar. Moving forward, any user who clicks through an article shared on a LinkedIn group will be able to share and comment directly from the news article. You can also discover related news content through the same toolbar, without having to switch back and forth between the news discussion page (on LinkedIn) and the news article.

All of the above three actions can be made directly through the ActionBar that you can find on the top of the article you’ve clicked through to. Check out the screenshot below.

LinkedIn’s ActionBar will allow group members to find and add value to the news that is most important to their respective groups. And, our goal with this iteration is to make it even simpler for users to participate in these  conversations.

As always – we look forward to and appreciate your feedback. Feel free to leave a comment on this blog or send us a tweet to @linkedin.

[Ed. note: Today's post features Sean Lindo, community manager at Box.net, who describes ways of making your resume stand out from the crowd. The Box.net application on LinkedIn, along with the rest of the inApps on LinkedIn can be found here]

Let’s make a bet. A safe one. I’m sure there’s more than a few of you out there that have spent hours, even days crafting the perfect cover letter and polishing your resume for a group of prospective employers, only to never hear back from any of them.  You swear you knocked it out of the park, but you just didn’t get the response you were hoping for. The reality is that there were at least a dozen other people that did the same thing and thought they knocked their resume and cover letter out of the park too.

Whether times are good or bad, getting that extra edge has always been important. You may have the right experience, degrees and attributes, but when employers have stacks and stacks of resumes sitting on their desk, you need something that’s going to make you stand out, especially these days. Writing great cover letters and resumes are a good start – an essential one, at that. But how can you go beyond that?

Showcase your work with Box.net and LinkedIn

One of the great things about LinkedIn is that you can show and tell so much more about yourself. Potential employers and connections can read recommendations about you, what your interests are and other details that are tough to fit into a standard cover letter and resume. Using Box.net’s Files app for LinkedIn, you can showcase what makes you and your experience unique – you can showcase your work.

In case you’re not familiar with Box, it’s a service that lets individuals and businesses store and share all kinds of content online. Besides standard files like Word documents, Excel sheets and PowerPoint presentations, you can store creative files, digital photos, videos, audio files…anything you want. This is where you should take a moment to let your imagination and creativity run wild. No matter what field you’re in, you can upload it to Box and share it right on your LinkedIn profile for the whole world to see. Share things like:

•    Illustrator and Photoshop files to display a creative portfolio
•    Writing samples of white papers, product brochures or press releases you’ve authored
•    A comprehensive archive of professional photography you’ve put together
•    Audio files of commercial jingles or voiceover projects
•    Digital movies you’ve created or video testimonials from your best references
•    Coding samples to show off your awesome programming skills

That just scratches the surface. If you think about all the work you’ve done, chances are you can share so much more of it than you thought. And you can do this easily just by uploading content to Box, putting it in a designated folder and sharing that folder on your LinkedIn profile. Get the Box.net Files app here.

As the Community Manager for Box.net, I use the Files app to showcase some of my work at Box – podcasts I did when we launched our iPhone app and links to interviews and articles I’ve been a part of for various Box launches. It’s the kind of thing I could never do on a resume and cover letter.

This goes the other way too. When I was interviewing candidates for a marketing opening at Box, a few candidates mentioned pieces of information they learned from my profile and referenced some of the files I posted in my own Box portfolio. It impressed me how much research they did ahead of the interview and how detail-oriented they were. Those points were not lost in our internal candidate discussions.

Again, it all comes back to what makes you stand out. You might have the same degrees, professional background and skill set as the competition. But no one has this – your body of work. Showcase it proudly.

On Cinco de Mayo, we celebrated our 6th birthday AND welcomed our 40 millionth member to the LinkedIn network!  With two great reasons to celebrate, employees invited their families to come to the office for an afternoon fiesta.  There were popsicles and margaritas, pin the tail on the donkey and a scavenger hunt, cupcakes and tacos, mini sombreros and big fun for adults and kids alike!

As we celebrate success, we keep top of mind the importance of supporting our community.  For this event, we partnered with the Bring Me A Book Foundation who provides libraries of high quality children’s books and read aloud workshops to under served communities.  Did you know reading aloud to children at an early age is the single most important activity for building eventual success in reading AND two-thirds of all low-income families and most low-income childcare centers and preschools have zero age-appropriate books?   Yes, that’s a zero!

Employees graciously donated over $1,400 dollars to donate two bookcases for local pre-schools in Mountain View!  Keeping with our fiesta theme, the bookcases will be bilingual with Spanish and English books.  Thanks to Bring Me A Book for all the fabulous work they do throughout the year and for partnering with us.

Thanks to Alice’s Restaurant for catering the food & drinks and to Kara’s Cupcakes in Palo Alto for providing 600 yummy mini cupcakes…if you haven’t had the banana caramel you should definitely try it – it was our favorite!

Thanks to all our members, our employees and their families for another great year!  Olé!

Check out the rest of the pictures taken at the birthday party here

In November 2008, we launched LinkedIn Events – a product that enabled users to add an event and/or RSVP to an existing event. LinkedIn would let their network know they were attending by sending out a network update and displaying the event as a badge on their profile. Moving forward, we have made it even easier to find what events your professional contacts are attending or speaking at.

We have put together an experience that many users have been asking for: a way to see what events your connections are attending. Also on the new LinkedIn Events home page is a list of the most popular events in your industry, the events that you have RSVP’d to, all event related network updates, and the ability to search all of our events, add an event, or express interest in enhanced event listings.

To view the new home page you can either click on Events from the left hand navigation found under the Applications menu, from the events module on the home page, or by directly going to the LinkedIn Events hub.

As always, the team (Christian Niles – software engineer, Barbara Raitz – software engineer, Jeremy Gillick – web developer, Frank Ramirez – design) would love to get your feedback on the new feature.  Please respond to this post via comments with your thoughts!

Check out the new LinkedIn Events hub

[Ed. note: Today's post features Gregg Brockway, co-founder of TripIt, who talks about the genesis of the MyTravel application on LinkedIn followed by some users sharing their experience of the app. The My Travel application on LinkedIn, along with the rest of the inApps on LinkedIn can be found here]

We started TripIt because we thought it should be easier for travelers to organize and share their trips. To this end, we built a technology that reads the data in your travel confirmation emails and uses it to create a master itinerary that’s easy to customize and share. Along the way, we also added support for over 500 travel booking sites worldwide.

As a startup, we were pretty excited when LinkedIn approached us about the MyTravel application last year. We immediately recognized this as a huge opportunity to deliver real benefits to business travelers.

When we designed the My Travel application, we wanted to deliver immediate value to LinkedIn users. Once the application is installed, you immediately see everyone in your LinkedIn network who will be close to you when you travel. We knew that this would not only become a great business resource, but will also provide some fun opportunities for people to get together socially.

Also, now more than ever, businesses are looking for ways to get the most out of the dollars they spend on travel. By making it easy for business travelers to set up productive meetings while they are on the road, the TripIt app is uniquely able to squeeze a little more value out of those dollars.

We get a lot of feedback from people who have connected with former colleagues, classmates and friends using the My Travel application on LinkedIn. I thought it would be fun to share a couple of real stories. Read on…

Susan Black, Travel Industry Consultant and Senior Marketing / eCommerce Executive:

Several industry contacts were attending the same conference in San Francisco. They saw that I was also traveling to San Francisco, via the TripIt application on LinkedIn, and sent me messages asking to meet while we were all there. I would say that these meetings were the best return on my investment for the two-day event! Had it not been for TripIt, it would have been unlikely that these meetings would have occurred – or had I just met up with the people at the conference with no forewarning, the meeting agendas would certainly not have been set in advance. Now, when I am going to events, I alert everyone using the TripIt application on LinkedIn.

Patrick Chanezon, Google Developer Advocate:

So, I’m at this conference about social networks for the education community in Montreal, and I meet up with Sylvain Carle at breakfast. I used to follow Sylvain’s blog years ago, and we had a web friendship, but had never met. Since we both use social networks heavily, we’re connected on LinkedIn. And, without knowing it, we both use the TripIt app on LinkedIn. During a session, I sit down next to Sylvain and start preparing demos for my Open Social presentation, while tweeting about the session. I wanted to demo the TripIt app on LinkedIn, because it is one of the social apps that I find really useful. And then it happens- I open the app and see that someone in my network is also in Montreal today- Sylvain, who’s sitting right next to me. That was so hilarious that I did a screenshot and tweeted it right away. To me this is a fun example of the power of a social application like TripIt, transforming business trips in social objects, and helping me meet old friends, or discover new ones.

If you want to join the fun and see where everyone is in your LinkedIn network, just add My Travel to your LinkedIn account. And be sure to contact us at feedback@tripit.com if TripIt helps you re-connect with someone or just helps your trips go a little more smoothly. Feel free to also leave a comment on this post.

40 million members strong in 6 years, almost to the date! Its always fun to look back down memory lane, and what a year its been! Yours truly has been here for almost a couple of years, so I thought I’d give you a little perspective on some of the milestones we’ve crossed in the past year compared to the first 5 years:

As you might guess from the chart above, we’ve spent the last year building functionality that help you: create, connect, and collaborate with your connections. A few key highlights from the past year:

•    Group discussions
•    LinkedIn Applications
•    LinkedIn in Spanish
•    LinkedIn in French
•    LinkedIn In German
•    Direct Ads
•    LinkedIn Polls
•    Company Profiles
•    All new LinkedIn People Search
•    LinkedIn iPhone app

This past year wasn’t just a success for LinkedIn, but even more importantly for our users as well:

•    “About a week later, I was offered an amazing job at Microsoft in Boston, and it wouldn’t have happened without LinkedIn.” -  Adam Conrad: future Microsoft employee

•    “Within the first week, a former client responded and we connected. Out of that came aa $1 million consulting contract, just because we were able to connect and remember.” – Darrel Rhea: CEO, Cheskin

•    “We saved somewhere between $75K and $150K and found the kind of person with the exact set of capabilities I was looking for.” – Randall Rothenberg: President & CEO, Interactive Advertising Bureau

We’re looking forward to another great year. What will the future bring? Only time will tell, but we here at LinkedIn look forward to building it with you – our users.

Check out how some of our user success stories here

[Ed note: This is the last in a series of posts from our users as part of Grad Guides seek week. Henric Haldeborg is a JD and MPA student at Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio. By years end, he’ll leave the comforts of academic abstraction for the harsh realities of gainful employment to somewhere warm, if he has anything to say about it]

So, I’ve been asked to write a few lines about how I use LinkedIn to search for jobs and internships. I’ll start with an example straight out of reality:

Back in the beginning of the year, I took an interim class in mediation, where the professor mentioned that he had a LinkedIn group devoted to mediation and arbitration that he would be happy to let any interested students join. Of course, I bit immediately. We got to talking in class and before I knew it I had landed a clerkship (legalese for internship) with the idea that it will turn into a full time, permanent position once I’m done with school in December.

Of course, I’m not saying that by you joining groups on LinkedIn employers will magically come out of the woodwork to offer you fancy positions at their firms. What I am saying is that in your quest for that elusive foot in the door you want to be where the right people are. Pick your groups and join in on the fun (or start some of your own). Show interest, initiative, and a willingness to learn. Before you know it, the right people (or people who know the right people) will notice.

[Ed. note: This belongs to our series of posts featuring tips for recent grads from LinkedIn users. Steffany Bane works as a Copywriter at a Digital Advertising Agency. She is also Co-Author of the off-to-college book I’ll Miss you too]

Parents have been playing the catch-up game when it comes to technology. But these days, more parents are connected then ever before. The benefit of this is how busy a college Freshman’s academic schedule (ahem) social calendar is, and in a world of multi-tasking, they can always find time for an electronic message but may not be able to squeeze in a phone call. The benefit to this is #1 Students can edit their entry (ie. delete the curse words) #2 They don’t have to hear Mom’s lecturing voice. #3 If inspiration strikes at 2:00am, they won’t be waking anyone up.

This leads to the interesting factor of just how comfortable a teen can become in sharing details to the point where you’re left feeling sorry you ever asked about how the cafeteria food was or their roommate was doing.

A normal phone call might consist of answers like: “Good. Fine. OK. Bye.” An email, text or a tweet may give explicit details about how the cafeteria oatmeal tastes like the smell of Uncle Joe’s breath after a cigar or how their roommate’s battle with excess gas during the night is subconsciously affecting their dreams.

But do not fear. This is a good thing. If anything, it makes you realize you are not in control anymore. And this is the part where you let go. Trust that you’ve raised and instilled core values students will carry with them throughout college. After all, it’s part of growing up process, which both parents and students continue to experience the rest of their lives.

[Ed. note: This belongs to our series of posts featuring tips for recent grads from LinkedIn users. Robb Pardee is a leadership and career coach focused on developing next generation leaders.  His company Strategic Leadership Coach offers coaching and training services to organizations and individuals to maximize their potential.]

Graduation is an exciting time overflowing with dreams and aspirations.  Here are a few suggestions to make this transition as smooth as possible for both the graduates and the parents:

1. Manage expectations – Schedule a purposeful conversation to discuss everyone’s expectations regarding the career search. Take advantage of this time to get everything out on the table in terms of needs and desires.

2. Acknowledge emotions – The graduate may be experiencing fears of failure or sadness about leaving college friends behind. Parents may be uneasy about moving closer to an empty nest.  It is okay to grieve your losses even as you celebrate the opportunities.

3.  Develop healthy boundaries – The graduate is moving to a new level of responsibility in their lives and it is essential for a shift to take place in the parent / child relationship.  Behaving as a responsible independent adult starts at home but bears fruit in the workplace.

4.  Learn the skill of job searching – Parents can offer support and input, but need to avoid undermining or enabling the job search. Respect the boundaries and allow the graduate to take responsibility for the search and doing the real work.

5. Utilize resources – Reduce your anxiety by engaging support from college career centers, alumni associations, and web resources. If you still need additional support seek out a qualified career coach or counselor.

Enjoy this time in your life and remember that as big as this feels your decisions are not set in stone.

Check out the rest of of our posts featuring tips for graduating students here