During a Google Hangout last week, my colleagues and I had the opportunity to speak with Astronaut Abby, an aspiring scientist and astronaut, who dreams of being the first to land on Mars. Visiting her webpage Astronautabby.com is a great way to follow her on her journey and get inspired! She has achieved some very exceptional things for a 18 year old girl just beginning college. I am a 22 year old college graduate who is now taking a college course to help expand the quality of my PLN, and she has been networking with professionals since she was 14 years old. During the course of the conversation with Abby she was able to provide us with some very useful tips on how to connect with professionals. She explained the 24 hour Rule, which directs us to contact a professional by email within 24 hours of meeting them. I have just recently attended a career fair and wish that I knew about this rule prior. But Abby had some great suggestions on how to actively reach out to professionals and build a network. You must reinforce those connections. As she said, it is not enough to just follow them on social networks. 
Another great tip that I wish I received prior to the career fair, was the use of a business card mobile app mentioned by Professor Calderwood. I actually found a great one called CamCard, which provides you with the opportunity to scan and store any business cards for free! It has some really great reviews on it's ability and function. You can add notes and reminders to contacts, get contact updates, and search your contacts' company for news to start a great conversation. This app is a perfect fit for any professional and can help expand the quality of your PLN.
You want to know another great way to connect with professionals? Grab their attention. Your resume, your degree, and your LinkedIn, can speak for your credentials but how well can you present information? Without boring them with your wordy PowerPoint of course.
There are so many advanced presentation tools that can serve as an alternative to PowerPoint and can be used for any educational and professional purpose. For example you can spice up your presentation with the free iPad app Haiku Deck. Haiku Deck is all about simple, beautiful, and fun. Just type a few words onto your slide and the program will search for matching (free) Creative Commons licensed photos. You then select the photo you feel best communicates your message and stylish formatting is applied with just a couple of taps. The app pulls in photo attribution automatically, which is a huge time saver.
Or may I suggest this article on 5 reasons to replace PowerPoint with Google Slides. Google slides is built for collaboration, has a simple UI which encourages a simpler presentation, has offline access for editing and presenting, you can access your presentation from ANY device, and provides easy web publishing and sharing. ITS ALSO FREE! I think it is great that Google Slides allows you to share your presentation on the web, where you are most likely to interact with professionals the most. They can even comment on your presentation with positive feedback or anything they may have gained from the information. This article Anything but PowerPoint helps me to rest my case. It provides in-depth descriptions of other presentation tools that blow ordinary slide shows out of the water. These tools allow you to utilize sound, animation, and other effects that may be way more eye-catching to professionals and colleagues. It suggests the android mobile app called SoftMaker, which allows you to create slides straight from your android device. And Prezi, a tool that allows a presenter to pan and zoom around a contiguous presentation, versus the serial one-slide-at-a-time productions. Long story short, is the only experience more painful than sitting through a boring presentation is giving a boring presentation. If a concept is worth presenting, it’s worth presenting effectively
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