As you may have guessed by the title, this week I dusted off the cobwebs from my inactive Twitter account and decided to join the Twitter community. The reason for this sudden interest, aside from classwork, was the realization that the wider and more data feeds I have from non-corporate entities, the more I will be able to learn from less-published data sources. I chose to follow a slew of people and companies that are centered around my professional life and interests.

Lisa B. (@lisabriercliff)

• Lisa is in the IT industry, near as I can tell and her feed is dominated by data analytic stories from the tech, automotive, and humanitarian sectors. Either way, from her feed, many interesting tidbits and ideas are present from which I can learn.

William McKnight (@williammcknight)

• William won me over with the hashtags that he used in his profile. Who isn’t extremely interested in #InformationManagement #BigData #Analytics? Oh, well I guess I’m the weird ~.04% who prefer William to Kim Kardashian. William’s profile offers many good resources for lectures and info that can be leveraged by anyone from the curious, to the hardcore data enthusiasts.

Wayne Eckerson (@weckerson)

• Eckerson, with his extensive pedigree offers insights in his twitter feed to the issues that I am confronted with daily in my work. While the others I decided to follow offer insights that are applicable around data and other topics that are of individual and professional interest, Ecker runs a Twitter buffet of pure big-business solution articles that anyone in a corporate environment can leverage.

Cindi Howson (@biscorecard)

• This Tweeter is a VP of research for Gartner. The feed that she maintains is reflective of this, in that it is an assembly of re-Tweets that have to do with the Business Intelligence world. The Tweets are geared toward where the industry is going and what the future may be…and also some Tweets from her personal life, which is a nice addition.

UpSearchBI (@UpSearchBI)

• I followed this one due to the fact that there is a vast lack of inspirational quotes about Business Intelligence in my life. On a more serious note though, this organization hired an excellent Tweeter. I think that this Twitter account offers some nuggets of wisdom as to why Business Intelligence professionals do what they do.

While all of these Twitter accounts are great resources, the core thing that logging in and seeing these users has taught me thus far is that there is a core community of individuals who are interested in figuring out how the world around us works. Through the use of different technologies and ideas which are present in all of these accounts, we can make many seemingly complicated problems approachable and solvable.

Each of the social media savvy individuals seem to do similar things (other than UpSearchBI’s one liners). Posting mentally stimulating, engaging articles on the way that the Business Intelligence industry is going, and how it can be leveraged. After following these individuals I have entered the Twitter-sphere by re-Tweeting a post from Lisa B. I hope to use this micro-blogging social media blogging like much of the accounts I now follow do. Posting interesting and engaging articles that I find for discussion, and hopefully find a few individuals who share my interests.

The catalyst for the creation of this blog is my enrollment in a Social Media Marketing class at St. Edward’s University. As part of the creation of this blog, each of Professor Ramirez’s students have been asked to do an analysis of the current footprint that we each have on the internet. The primary measure of this is typing your name into Google (as we have all done at one time or another) and another search engine and seeing what comes up. So here it goes…

Looking at the first page of results, it becomes clear that I am far from the most important and/or famous Michael Greis in the world. Which I’m not at all bitter about, as the life of a Business Intelligence Developer at GM is much more exciting than the life of an Olympian…Luckily, I am not completely overshadowed by this Olympian due to my Linkedin page.

The second search engine I used was Bing, which I had more of a footprint on. As a side note, this probably means that Google has a better search algorithm than Bing, as most people who search Michael Greis are probably looking for the famous one. On the Bing results page, I came up first through Facebook. If I clicked on the LinkedIn link present on the first page I was the first Michael Greis to pop-up in the Linkedin results. This seems to be good news, as Facebook and Linkedin are the primary places where I currently maintain an online presence.

These results don’t give any indication as to who I am, which I suppose would be a positive if I didn’t want to establish an online presence. If I were to interpret my current online footprint, I would label it as “every other college graduate”. I have a Facebook profile because I have always had one, and the stats back up the statement that the vast majority if people my age and with a college education have a Facebook. I have a Linkedin because at one point or another I was told that I wouldn’t get a job without a Linkedin profile, as apparently almost half  of college graduates were also told.

This then raises the question, what are my goals with this blog? After all, what’s a blog posting rate of less than 10 million a day indicate other than a dying medium? Well, my first goal is to create something that is hopefully enjoyable to read, and a place where I can post things that I find interesting for future reference and sharing with others. The next goal is to increase traffic to this blog and hopefully create the opportunity to converse with others who have similar interests to mine. My final goal is to establish an online presence where I can present myself somewhere between the stuffiness of Linkedin and the no-holds-barred cage match that is the user community of Facebook.

By the end of April I hope to have:

• 3 followers
• 100 visits
• 30 unique visitors
• 20 blog posts

Let the games begin!