Pamela Poole

I was at the E-reputation barcamp held at La Cantine yesterday, where I  attended a session on personal branding given by Fadhila Brahimi. In Fadhila’s session, I was primarily interested in the questions, hopes and fears of the other attendees, so that I could address them in future talks and posts about online identity and personal branding myself.

Two themes stood out: whether there’s an inherent conflict in creating a personal brand when you work for a company, and how to deal with personal branding when you’re also engaged in branding a startup. I’m sure I’ll talk about these issues here at some point.

I came away with an awesome tip given by Fadhila. When she was asked how to brand yourself when you have a diverse background and skill set (which is increasingly the case for more and more of us), she said that you should choose one element to place at the forefront that will allow people to envision what might be behind it.

She used the metaphor of a boulangerie (bakery) and said that everybody knows what a boulangerie is and that you can get all kinds of different things inside.

So,  when you’re creating your personal brand, be a bakery. Give people a concept of yourself they can grasp, but one that is not too limiting for you.

I also sat in on a session about certifying your digital identity presented by the founder of MyID.is Certified, a French startup to watch, and one I’ll probably write about on Web Worker Daily.