Hi there. I'm Kimberly Barker, the emerging technology librarian at the University of Virginia's Claudmore Health Sciences Library. And wow that was a mouthful. Today I'd like to take an opportunity to talk to you about why you might choose to take this class on personal branding. For years a metaphor that I have used to persuade organizations and individuals about the importance of doing outreach via social media and other communication channels is the party metaphor. Now if you stick with this class, you will quickly learn that I have a great love of Hobbits, and that in fact, I am a Hobbit. So bear with me, cuz I may talk about parties a lot. But the party metaphor is very simple, and it goes like this. Say that you decide you're going to host a party. There are several things that you do. You pick out the music for the party. You pick out the decorations perhaps for the party. You make sure that you're going to have great food and beverages for your guests. You make sure that your house is clean. You do all of this prep work. When the day of the party comes, no one shows up. Why is no one showing up? Oh, I know why no one's showing up. It's because I forgot to send out invitations. I forgot to tell people that I was throwing a party. I like to use this as a metaphor because I believe, quite honestly everyone has a gift to give this world. Everyone has talents. Everyone has gifts, but if you don't tell people that, if you don't share that knowledge with the world, people don't know how to find you and they don't know that you have these gifts to give. I know that for some people, the idea of branding and promoting yourself feels kind of icky, because especially in some cultures, the idea of putting yourself forward and somehow saying I'm really good at this, is frowned upon. And I have a lot of respect for that. However, I believe that to deny the world the gifts that you can give, you do a disservice to the world because sometimes, honestly, you are the best person for the job. And if you don't let people know what your gifts are, then they don't know that you're the right person. So there is a way to do personal branding and marketing of yourself that feels very clean and very authentic and those are the kinds of things we're going to explore in this course. So if this is interesting to you, please consider sharing the course with others, definitely consider taking it. One of my big goals for the course is to create a really warm, supportive community where learners can interact with each other and with me, and we can really build a community out of this in which we can support each other in these goals. So I hope you'll consider. Get in touch if you have questions. I'd love to hear from you.