ThePortForum.com

Background: I am trying to locate Port lovers in the NYC area, and to do that I want to present myself as a respectable member of the NY TPF crew. g-man and I discussed this a while ago and decided that meant business cards (which i believe jdaw1 has taken over design/construction) with titles. We'd be able to leave those cards with shops for their port clients, at claret tastings, and with generally anyone who might be interested.

Today's issue is as follows: There are some Vintage Port folks on LinkedIn. To approach them properly, I need to add TPF to my LinkedIn profile (it's styled as a professional network, moreso than say FaceBook). I have done this, assigning myself a title g-man and I agreed we'd use: NYC Tasting Coordinator. So far so good. When I did this, LinkedIn offered to create a company profile for The Port Forum (thereby making us a somewhat official entity, in their eyes). All I would need to proceed is an @theportforum.com email address. I can still call myself whatever i want, however connecting it to an entity would give TPF additional visibility.

So here's the question:
1) Do we want TPF to be recognized as an official entity on sites like LinkedIn?
2) Do we have @tpf email addresses for members to use when signing up at such sites and in order to confirm their membership?

This has now been done with SushiNorth and g-man having e-mail addresses. The members with e-mail addresses, all @theportforum.com, are:

admin;
KillerB;
DRT;
jdaw1;
UncleTom;
SushiNorth;
G-man
AHB
RonnieRoots
GlennE

If anybody would like a TPF e-mail address for use with LinkedIn or for any other purpose then please send a PM to me. I can't hand them out to all members as there is a strict limit but all long-standing senior members (arbitrary 500 posts but even that's open to negotiation) should be able to get one if they would like it. I can also redirect to your normal e-mail account if you would like, especially as logging in is a bit of a pain,

Admin

I've put in version 1. If folks think changes are needed, please let me know.
http://www.linkedin.com/companies/456673

SushiNorth,

Just took a look. Would this be better set up as a Group rather than a company? I am not an expert with LinkedIn but it seems the only way I can join is to say I "work" for TPF. Am i missing something?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

I'd considered that, however what I was looking for was a way to "represent" TPF when i'm recruiting folks at tastings. A group doesn't get us anything we don't already get by coming here. So i listed TPF as an Educational Institution. On linked in, it doesn't really make much sense to display one's affiliation with any organization/group/company/etc unless you've got a self-described reason for being part of it.

And that leads us to, how do we self describe ourselves? g-man and I agreed on NYC Tasting Coordinator, but "Subject Matter Expert" or "Buyer" is probably a reasonable term for anyone else around here who doesn't want to get questions about regional tastings.