Want to learn more about how to develop or integrate with the LinkedIn platform? Then plan on attending the LinkedIn Developer Meetup at Kube Hotel, Paris (December 9th at 5:30pm CET / 17:30 hrs) that we’re holding on the sidelines of the Le Web Conference this year. A big thanks to Dave McClure and Loic Le Meur for helping with the developer meetup!

At the meetup, we’ll show you how you can use our Developer Portal to quickly get up and running. You’ll also get to hear from other developers who’ve already built integrations with our APIs. We’ll have ample time for Q&A and some networking after that (of course)!

LinkedIn Developer Meetup at Kube Hotel, Paris (Le Web 09) on Dec 9th, 09

Since we opened the LinkedIn APIs for all developers, we’ve seen a tremendous response from the developer community. We’ve seen developers quickly build a community at our Developer portal and build the tools and techniques that make it so easy to integrate with LinkedIn. These include a PHP Library, a Ruby Gem and .NET integration via DotNetOpenAuth.

We believe this rapid uptake is the result of open standards such as OAuth, which allows other developers to use off the shelf libraries and open-source projects to quickly take advantage of them. I look forward to discussing these topics at the meetup mentioned above.

We’re excited to see integrations like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Sobees and many more that now allow you to bring LinkedIn to your desktop. Similar integrations announced earlier this month with Microsoft Outlook 2010, Blackberry, etc. will continue to help you extend your LinkedIn network to all areas of your  professional life – wherever you work.

[Ed. note: We're taking a break from the usual format of guest posts to include Q&A posts such as these. This is the first in the series and is a conversation that Jose Mallabo from LinkedIn had with Ajay Jain, author of “Let’s Connect: Using LinkedIn to get ahead at work” when he was over in India recently]

During a market intelligence gathering trip to Mumbai and Delhi, I was fortunate enough to grab a cup of coffee with Ajay Jain, one of India’s more prolific bloggers and author of several travel and social networking books. Needless to say, I listened and learned a ton about social networking in India. Below is a synopsis of our chat in Gurgaon (southwest of Delhi) last week.

JM: I just met with a bunch of Indian PR firms and almost all of them pointed to you as the most influential blogger on social media in India.

AJ: (Big smile and shrug) It’s probably because of my book on LinkedIn and a couple of columns I wrote in the media here.  My new travel book goes to print today.

JM: That’s great. What the heck are you doing here with me then?

AJ: Well, it’s done so there’s not much to do today other than promote it.  It’s a pictorial travelogue of my trip through Ladakh, a high altitude Himalayan region bordering Tibet and Pakistan. Travelling has become a key agenda in my life; I need to get away from the cacophony of big cities and the rat race forced upon all of us. Call it social ‘un-networking’ – or seeking opportunities to make friends with even those who have never seen a computer.

JM: Send me an InMail on how to buy it and I’ll check it out. You’re kind of living the dream. I don’t know many people who wouldn’t want to make a living as a blogger and travel writer.

AJ: (Bigger smile, laughter) I have a long waiting list of those wanting to assist me. But this option does not come with guaranteed pay checks I tell them.

JM: In all your talks and trainings on how to use social media and LinkedIn, what have you found is the most interesting use or issue with it in India?

AJ: Recruiters seem to be most active here, but they tend to rely more on Introductions and InMails to get through to candidates.  Just to save a few advertising dollars, they often tend to be irksome. Some LinkedIn users don’t seem to realize the value of interacting on the site just like they would in the real world. You can play the fool on MySpace and Facebook if you choose to, but LinkedIn is all about real people, with real identities out to conduct serious business.

Indian users also tend to get suddenly active when they have a need. This can sometimes be seen as selfish behavior.  You have to nurture relationships over time to get the most out of your contacts. It’s back to what we should be doing in the real world.

A cultural trait is worth mentioning here: Indians are generally happier to socialize and talk in person. We are not very keen on written communication which often comes in the way of meaningful engagement on social media and blogs. And unlike the West, we have an overdose of people socializing with us including family, friends and colleagues. For many Indians, we want social isolation rather than more networking.

JM: What is a common misconception you hear about India and social media?

AJ: It may sound strange in the American context, but you may need to go a little offline. And organize some face to face meets with users in India to drive home value of LinkedIn, what they should be doing and how to conduct themselves. It will require a bit of effort, but the same thing documented and sent electronically won’t resonate. Again, Indians tend to ask and figure things out rather than read any manuals or books explaining the same point better.

JM: Which is exactly why I flew 9,000 miles to see you, right?

AJ: Well, you could have just emailed me!

Ajay will be hosting a fireside chat with Deep Nishar, vice president of product development at LinkedIn, at IIT Bombay on September 23.

First off, thanks to everyone who attended the first LinkedIn Tech Talk session featuring the creator of SCALA, Martin Odersky, along with Nick Kallen of Twitter and David Pollak of LIFT. We had over 150 attendees at the event although we had originally planned only for 100. In addition to the audience here at Mountain View, we also live streamed the event to over ~1000 viewers, with over 140 of them viewing it live.

We’d also like to thank the following participants for submitting questions that drove the panel discussion: Parag Joshi, Vladimir Bacvanski, Pradeep Pujari, Mark Wong-VanHaren, Peter Simanyi, Aden Davies, Hernan Silberman, and  LinkedIn’s Nick Dellamaggiore and Eishay Smith.

For those of you who had asked us to keep you posted of similar events in the future, we’ve created a LinkedIn group called Tech Talk Conversations where we’ll announce it first and will continue featuring discussions from LinkedIn’s own engineering community before and after the event. Feel free to join the group by clicking on the link below.

Join LinkedIn’s Tech Talk Conversations group to be informed of future events

For those of you who haven’t seen the panel discussion yet, check out the embedded video below. It’s a tad long with a running time of nearly 61 minutes, but if you’re interested in SCALA it will be well worth it.

You’ve read my earlier post announcing today’s Tech Talk, which we’re hosting at our newly expanded Mountain View office space. We’ve sent out event details to the early bird sign-ups over the past few days, and we look forward to meeting everyone at our newly expanded office space in Mountain View.

Address: 2027 Stierlin Ct., Mountain View, CA 94043 (Map here)

But we also wanted to share today’s presentation with a wider audience and have set up a live video stream that you can access through the link given below. We’ll be streaming live starting 12:30pm (Pacific)/3:30pm (Eastern) today.

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

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

Moderated by Arnold Goldberg – VP, Platform Engineering at LinkedIn

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.