Thanks to the thousands of small business owners and professionals for submitting your questions to the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) through LinkedIn Answers on some of the most important issues you’re dealing with around health care. We appreciate the thoughtfulness and passion with which you’ve crafted these questions.

We’d also like to thank the members of LinkedIn’s small business committee (David Reingold, Donald Rossberg, Jim Locke, Abraham Jankans, and Rudy Sutherland) who helped pick the questions that were answered by the CEA chair, Christina Romer at a live web video conference this past week (see below video).

Given below are the questions from LinkedIn’s small business community that were answered by the CEA. Check out a more detailed response to these questions in the video above:

1. How will the current health care proposals level the playing field so small businesses can effectively compete with large corporations for human capital?

-  Abraham Jankans, President & CEO at LaunchPad Careers Inc. (Los Angeles)

2. How will you make health care affordable and available to small business?  What about co-ops, affordable rates and inclusion of pre-existing conditions?

- from Kyra Cavanaugh, President of Life Meets Work Inc. (Chicago)

Kyra’s commentary:

For so many of us who’ve left jobs in corporate America with great health benefits to forge our own path through entrepreneurship, our families are left to suffer with sub-standard insurance and inclusion in the class of under-insured Americans.

3. How will you improve competition in health care, to allow for more competitive health plans, and what with this plan to do promote a more health environment through wellness?

- from A.J. Vazquez III, Founding Partner, AJV-Attorneys at Law (Miami)

A.J.’s commentary:

Affordability and availability. A small business owner should have a competitive selection of comparable health plans to choose from. As a small business owner taking care of my people is important to me. Creating an environment that focuses on wellness is a priority at my law firm. Healthy, productive employees are not only great for your company but is ultimately great for their respective families and our communities at large. It’s a win – win situation in the end that’s well worth the effort.

4. How did we get from providing insurance as a benefit, to the “requirement” that businesses provide insurance?

- from Marc Young, President at Zantech, Inc (watch repair company in Peoria, Illinois)

Marc’s commentary:

If we recognize that there are three basic tiers in the health care issue. Tier one –  the providers (doctors, hospitals), this is where the “cost factors” begin.  Many providers do not post their prices and they are not generally required or incented to be competitive with real cost hidden by the other  Tiers; Tier two – the insurance companies, help to hide these costs and tack on their own costs as well as profits they earn; and Tier  three – business that provide health coverage, although not directly adding to the cost of healthcare must increase their prices to generate more profits to cover the costs passed on to them from Tiers 1 and  2 less whatever recovery of costs they can get from their employee base. Since Insurance  was never intended to be a perk but rather to be a necessary component of running a business, provided to compete for better employees.

5. Is making small businesses responsible for providing health care simply giving a competitive advantage to big businesses?  Why not start with Tort reform and mandating insurers to cover pre-existing conditions with all policies being full portable, regardless of state, company or position?

- from Donald Rossberg, President of Dataworks, Inc. (IT consulting firm in Kansas City, Missouri)

To read more questions submitted by our users over the past week (over 1500 submissions), please go here.

As I’ve voiced before, small businesses are critical to our economy. On LinkedIn, over 12 million of you own or work at a small business. That’s why we’ve teamed up with the White House to make sure your voice is heard.

Today in his weekly address, President Barack Obama focused on health care for small businesses and announced that the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) just released a report on The Economic Impact of Health Insurance on Small Businesses and their Employees. The report highlights the essential role of small businesses in our economy and calls for health care reform to reduce the burdens that the current system place on them.

The President is asking for your feedback. CEA Chair Christina Romer has posed a question on LinkedIn to engage in a dialogue with the small business community. She will be addressing your comments and questions in a live online video chat this coming Wednesday. We urge you to take part in this important dialogue and share your expertise and insights with our policy makers.

Whether or not we realize it, we all live and work in a networked world.  Reputations matter.  Relationships matter.  Information is bombarding us from a rapidly swelling variety of sources, with increasing frequency and variability in terms of quality.  Interestingly, people are managing this incredible increase in complexity with habits and business practices that date back decades, if not centuries.

They consider the source.  They consider the context.

Fortunately, in the 21st century, with the birth of the social web, we have tools at our disposal that are orders of magnitude more powerful than we have ever had as individuals or as a society.  To quote David Weinberger from his recent talk at PDF09, Transparency is the New Objectivity:

What we used to believe because we thought the author was objective we now believe because we can see through the author’s writings to the sources and values that brought her to that position. Transparency gives the reader information by which she can undo some of the unintended effects of the ever-present biases. Transparency brings us to reliability the way objectivity used to.

This change is, well, epochal.

David is talking about journalism, but his insights are at the heart of why LinkedIn is such a powerful concept.  On LinkedIn, the skills that you’ve spent your career obtaining, the experience that you’ve earned, the trusted relationships that you’ve formed – they are all made largely transparent.  Your professional reputation and relationships matter – and not just to you.  That value extends far beyond your profile itself – it carries over to every interaction, every message, and every piece of contributed content.

LinkedIn Recommendations are a great example.

Most people who have applied to higher level educational institutions are familiar with the traditional methods of gathering recommendations.  Finding an advisor, mentor, or teacher willing to fill out a series of questions and write a sealed letter of recommendation.

LinkedIn Recommendations bring liquidity and transparency to the reputation economy.  As a result, the way people evaluate and respond to recommendations is changing as well.

Jeremiah Owyang wrote a post recently about a decision he has made to temporarily stop giving recommendations on LinkedIn.  In his post, he flags a number of concerns he has heard about recommendations and their relative value.  The comments on his post, and the responses on Twitter were interesting enough that it seems worthwhile to capture five of the insights about LinkedIn recommendations I gleaned here:

1. Reputation matters. On LinkedIn, your profile and reputation is tied to every recommendation you make.  As  a result, people can and do consider the source.  Having someone say you are a Web 2.0 visionary is fine and dandy, but those exact words coming from Jeremiah Owyang means something different.
2. Transparency matters. It’s trivial to see how many recommendations a person has given, and whether they tend to write the same things about everyone.  It’s also fairly trivial to see the relationship between the person being recommended and the source.
3. Content matters. Which recommendations a person publishes is up to the individual.  As a result, you won’t find “negative recommendations” (isn’t that an oxymoron?) on the site, any more that you would expect a person giving references for a job to give you people who think poorly of them.  However, recommendations speak volumes in terms of what they do and don’t say. Check out this recommendation for Peter Thiel from Reid Hoffman:



Detailed characteristics, specific achievements, highly credible and relevant source.  That’s what you want to see.

4. Recommendations are often mutual. Is this really a surprise?  Most productive, informed positive professional relationships are mutual.  As a result, most people will, in fact, leave recommendations for each other.  The fact that you’re own reputation is tied to any recommendation you write is an incredibly significant incentive to keep words honest and defensible.
5. Requesting recommendations is normal. Think about this for a second.  Who are the people you most value professionally?  Do they know it?  More importantly, do others know?  In a perfect world, we would all proactively make sure that the people who have earned our trust and respect knew it, and that others knew it as well.  But we’re all busy, and the task rarely feels urgent.  That’s why, for literally centuries, most recommendations have been requested rather than spontaneously given.

As food for thought, let me challenge you to consider the following:

In this economy, more than ever people are realizing that the most important assets they have are the skills and experiences they have earned, and the trusted relationships they have formed.  As I mentioned above, we all know great people who deserve our public recognition.  They deserve the benefit of our hard-earned reputations, applied to endorse theirs.

So I ask each of you to take the time to select three of your connections who fit this description, and write them a LinkedIn recommendation, unsolicited.

My guess is that not only will the experience be rewarding for them, but it will also significantly rewarding for you.

This is part of our success story series where users share their tips and tricks on using LinkedIn more effectively. Today’s user experience story comes from Divya Gugnani, a venture capitalist and principal at First Mark Capital who provides companies with strategic and operational guidance to achieve their visions. Read more on one of her more recent sponsorship deals she closed, with the help of a LinkedIn connection.

I’m a LinkedIn evangelist, and as a startup CEO, I’ve become an even bigger fan. I love all things social media and happily ride the Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Yahoo! Buzz wave. What makes LinkedIn different and incredibly helpful is the instant access to my professional network with an easy to use interface. As a former venture capitalist I used LinkedIn to source deals, check references for management, and connect with entrepreneurs. Today I run a media company in the culinary space, Behind the Burner, where we leverage a network of over 250 culinary experts to package their best tips, tricks and techniques in the form of short videos, articles and blogs. We also offer tools and ingredients the experts recommend at a discount. We actively virally market our food and beverage tips learned Behind the Burner and I take this same sharing approach on LinkedIn.

I’ve networked and participated in various entrepreneur, startup, food and wine enthusiast groups on the site, from ONEKO Internet Entrepreneurs to Slow Food to Food Service Professionals Network. People regularly send me inMail for culinary how-tos, restaurant insights, small business questions and entrepreneurial advice. Sometimes these interactions result in new business relationships.

Last month, Michael Gross (CEO of AJ Madison) one of the country’s largest e-commerce appliance retailers, reached out to partner with us on one Behind the Burner’s video segments through LinkedIn. He wanted to further market his appliance brand and we were considering doing a piece on summer grilling, and so we made a deal. They sponsored the segment and offered a e-commerce deal so our members can enjoy free shipping on appliances through Labor Day and as a result, they got a great professional, widely syndicated video segment highlighting their high end outdoor grills and how to use them.

I also use LinkedIn to generate buzz about my new business and keep my personal and professional network up-to-speed on my culinary happenings. Adding my profile link in outgoing emails adds credibility and the extra qualification nudge with certain requests. Your LinkedIn profile is like a mini resume, that snapshots your skills, experience and offerings and I like being able to subtly sell my expertise, as well as investigate other people’s potential by reviewing their profiles. This has been great resource for recruiting new talent, including writers, videographers, graphic designers and interns.

Kevin Nichols is a Sr. Litigation Paralegal, President & CEO of KLN Publishing, LLC.  He’s also a columnist for The Globe Newspapers in the East Bay, and he writes for various publications nationwide.  As an active LinkedIn user, Kevin also moderates two LinkedIn groups, one of which he used to pull off a networking event for free. Check out his experience below. You can also find other stories from our users here.

LinkedIn is the premier social networking site for business professionals. It is the most consequential tool that I use to reach my business goals. As the moderator of the Downtown San Francisco Networking Group, I organize monthly and quarterly events for professionals who work downtown to network to create business opportunities for them.  I am personally concerned that a large percentage of our group is unemployed due to the economic downturn, some for almost a year! So, I decided to organize an Employment Symposium that will focus on improving resume writing skills, interviewing tips, how to prepare for, how to dress for, and how to follow up an interview. Because these individuals are unemployed, cost is of paramount concern. Skeptics suggested that this may take at least 3 – 4 months to plan and cost thousands of dollars.  Here is how I have use LinkedIn to organize this event for free in a month, like I have done for all of my previous events for my group.

First, I needed a location that could hold at least a hundred people comfortably so I updated my status indicating such. Within minutes, a colleague – Janine Mixon, Dean of Student Affairs at Golden Gate University – said that she might be able to get me space for no charge. Through my networking group, Janine introduced me to her colleagues David Javate (Assistant Director of Sales) and Ami Readdy (Recruiting and the Associate Director of Business Career Coaching), who both agreed to allow us to use their facility for free, provide resource materials, career guidance and placement information, etc. as parting gifts, assistant with obtaining panelists and with completing the planning.  After another status update, I obtained two businesses that agreed to sponsor the food for the event. Finally, upon searching through my LinkedIn contacts, I have leaned on my Fortune 500 recruiting contacts to donate their time by being panelists / facilitators. The moral of this story is, “Use your network to make the impossible, possible”.

Have a LinkedIn experience you’d like to share with us? Submit your story here.

Ed Brill is the Director of Product Management for Lotus Notes at IBM.  He is also a blogger and frequent traveler who loves the integration of TripIt with his LinkedIn Profile.  Today’s post is about how IBM is mashing up all of those tools to help make people like Ed more productive.

Millions of business professionals around the world enhance their daily productivity through their use of IBM Lotus Notes. When we delivered Lotus Notes 8, a key objective was to provide a “desktop of the future” — one that could integrate all of the content and information people need to be productive in a single client.  Instantly, developers all over the world were building widgets, plug-ins, and extensions to tie together corporate collaboration and user-customized information and content.

This week, IBM and LinkedIn are announcing the availability of the LinkedIn plug-in for Lotus Notes.  This easy to use add-in dynamically displays LinkedIn profile, status, and other information in the Notes 8 sidebar.  The new plug-in is a great example of “contextual collaboration” — where users access relevant information without having to leave behind what they are already working on.

I am excited about the LinkedIn plug-in for Lotus Notes.  It provides a much greater sense of collaboration and connection to the people I interact with every day by instantly increasing my knowledge about the author of e-mails and other content.  It leads to interesting discoveries of background, interests, projects, or education.  The benefits in improved relationships make this a must-have for Lotus Notes users, and a good reason for you to check out Notes if you’re not already using it.

For more information on the LinkedIn plug-in for Lotus Notes, visit http://www.linkedin.com/lotus

This is a guest post from our user, Linda Ruck, who runs her own Public Relations and Event Management consultancy in Singapore, Linda Ruck Communications (LRC)  with “a focus on personalized service”. In this post, she shares her best practices on how LinkedIn helped her win three global clients for her small business. You can find more of our user stories here.

Being a small business owner carving out a niche against the big players is very challenging. As with any small business you need to develop viable strategies, seek out opportunities and be creative on how to promote your business, all with a limited budget!

My LinkedIn profile has attracted clients and generated leads and referrals from the US, UK, Australia and throughout Asia seeking to hire expertise to organize their events or run their media and PR campaigns in Singapore and the region.

LinkedIn has proved to be an excellent marketing tool for LRC and more importantly has given me a global presence. My first success though LinkedIn was when I was contacted by a multinational company based in Boston which required a PR consultant in Singapore to support their Asian expansion plans. The company searched LinkedIn to find a PR company in Singapore who had expertise dealing with US based companies. LRC was one of a few companies short listed and after the initial contact and several conference calls they picked my agency to run their inbound media campaign. Having a robust, up-to-date LinkedIn profile definitely helped. Since then I have worked with this company every time they have had a project in the region.

Through opportunities in Linkedin, I have also worked with a $500 million company in the UK who contacted me through a respected mutual Linkedin contact to do their inbound media campaign in Singapore. We were also successful in winning the PR project to launch lavera, the fourth largest organic skincare company in the world.  And we have worked with several other multinational companies listed on LinkedIn, who either found us through common introductions or the LinkedIn’s advanced search.

In addition to my robust profile, I also actively participate in relevant user groups on LinkedIn. Groups is a great platform to engage in discussions and connect with like-minded professionals to learn and share, whether it’s for business or personal interest. And, most importantly, helps establish my thought leadership in a space I’ve carved out for myself as a small business owner.

Linkedin has definitely helped make my company, Linda Ruck Communications, a global player.

Have a LinkedIn experience you’d like to share with us? Submit your story here.

Code Alert! This is a part of our continuing series on Engineering at LinkedIn. If this isn’t your cup of Java, check back tomorrow for regular LinkedIn programming. In the meanwhile, check out some of our recent feature announcements, tips and tricks, or success stories.

Java One 2009 has come and gone, and once again the engineering team at LinkedIn had the opportunity to make a few presentations that we’d like to share on the blog. Earlier this week, Brandon and Yegor shared their presentation in this blog. In addition to that, Dhananjay and I, were given the opportunity to deliver a technical session at Java One 2009 on how LinkedIn stores its data. A grand time was enjoyed by the both of us, as we regaled some 200+ engineering folks on how we have built our services to manage the data storage platform. The presentation was extremely well received and we just learned that our session was chosen as a Top session at the conference and will be linked to from the Java One conference homepage.

In addition, we’ve also received requests for a copy of the slides from many of you, so we have embedded it in this post as well. Please feel free to share this content with your peers and stay tuned for more around this exciting area on the blog. Look forward to hearing your comments.

[Ed. note: This is a guest post from Kathy Steele, Vice President of an integrated marketing firm that credits networking as the key to their growth, and who discovered how vital social media sites like LinkedIn have become to their business process and success]

I have to admit for a number of years I was under-utilizing the resources on LinkedIn. Recently our company has joined the conversation by embracing social media as part of our integrated marketing plan, and now we work with our clients to establish Web 2.0 strategies.

We use LinkedIn to leverage the experience of our group members, vet ideas, create new connections and re-establish relationships to increase sales and publicize the achievements of our clients and ourselves. We have even found that in our sales process, sending an InMail has garnered a much higher response rate than using email or phone contact. We have just found that when we send InMail vs email we have been getting a response in the same day where we may have had no response in the past. In addition, we have also been able to be more prepared for a meeting by viewing a contact’s profile in advance. This has had significant impact on the timetable of our sales cycle, particularly in the cases when we respond to a blanket RFP or quote.

More recently, we’ve also found ourselves on the speaking circuit more often thanks to a LinkedIn Poll. By responding to a LinkedIn Poll we were found by the Chicago Tribune who asked us to weigh in on social media best practices. Recognition in the article has helped secure three new speaking gigs, which wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

We are so impressed with the results we are spreading the word! We have been speaking to groups of CEOs, affiliations and chambers about how to use LinkedIn as well as other social media tools in their marketing mix. Social media messaging takes time and commitment, but the return has given us credible visibility and exciting new opportunities to present our capabilities to interested prospects.

Code Alert! This is a part of our continuing series on Engineering at LinkedIn. If this isn’t your cup of Java, check back tomorrow for regular LinkedIn programming. In the meanwhile, check out some of our recent feature announcements, tips and tricks, or success stories.

At this year’s JavaOne conference Yegor Borovikov and myself had the opportunity to present details of our RESTful API framework. Our Birds of a Feather presentation is titled “Building Consistent RESTful APIs in a High Performance Environment” and it describes our use of a coherent domain model as the foundation for our APIs. Flip through the various slides in the embed below and feel free to leave a comment or two.

Also, stay tuned for another Java One Presentation from my colleagues David Raccah and Dhananjay Ragade, later this week.