So! If you haven’t heard about Project:Social yet, you might want to check out this announcement. It’s a fair summary of what we are trying to accomplish.

Back in late 2010, Victorio and I put together P:S to help connect those HR pros who wanted to know how to use social media with those who were already doing it well. We matched up three sets of mentors/mentees, and with little guidance sent them off into the wild blue yonder hand in hand. And you know what? It worked! (Here was a mid-stream review of the P:S happenings.)

We heard some great feedback from both sides of the relationship. Mentors said it was fun to connect with someone new/fresh and to get some ideas from someone just getting their feet wet. Mentees said it was comforting and reassuring to have someone there ready to answer questions and counter concerns at a moment’s notice. Win-win, right?

So Victorio and I wrapped up the first semester (although we encouraged the pairs to continue the relationship as long as it served them) and have moved into the second. We paired (okay, confession: Victorio is awesome at pairing people up, so I just got out of the way and let genius happen) up three more sets of people and will be doing more within the next month.

If you weren’t chosen, it’s not that we hate you. I promise. We just want to be able to offer as much support as possible to you and we are working a plan right now to make managing more mentor/mentee pairs a reality. We want it to be immensely useful for you. Seriously, if it’s not valuable, why do it at all?

Our three new pairs

Congratulations to the new pairs! You guys are in good hands.

• Inshirah Muhamut and Joan Ginsberg
• Pawan and Lance Haun
• Thad Figlock and John Jorgenson

Our new LinkedIn group

We wanted a place where people could go to support each other, ask questions, and further the relationships in a safe, simple way. LinkedIn is the network of choice for business professionals, so that quickly won the vote. Here is the link to the Project:Social LinkedIn group. You’ll notice that it is a subgroup of the HRevolution LinkedIn group. That’s because they share much of the same vision. Both were created to facilitate connections between HR pros who not only love using social media to be better/smarter/faster, but also love to share and teach that to others. Go ahead and join both. The more you participate the more you get out of it!

Follow the action on Twitter

If you’re using Twitter, the relevant Project:Social hashtag is #projectsocial. If you’re not using it, why not sign up for P:S so we can help you learn how useful it is? :-)

If you want to sign up to participate in an upcoming session of Project Social, please fill out the survey at this link.