What Is Polywork? The Future of Professional Social Media
Bernard Edwards’ Polywork Page
A person who knows a lot about many different subjects: Polymath, as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary. So what is Polywork? In short, Polywork is a new professional social media platform where you aren’t represented by your job title, and the school you went to, but by what you’ve accomplished and what you do. Your accomplishments, aspirations, and failures verses outdated endorsements.
“By helping people share what they do, we can democratize access to opportunities.”
My life has been the very definition of a polymath, and Polywork is just the tool I need to distill the “Multiverse” that is my life’s work. For example, just one year after exiting the military I became a public speaker and was the host master of ceremony for the DNX Global Conference in Bangkok, Thailand. This conference by the way, hosted just over 500 Digital Nomads, which by definition of all of their lives, should and will flock to Polywork. But more about that later.
Since retiring from the Air Force in 2014, I’ve interviewed NFL players at the Super Bowl, hung out with industry moguls like Gary Vaynerchuk, sold multi-million dollar homes in Hawaii, consulted and advised tech start-ups, and helped non-profit gain public attention and donations. Up until Polywork, there just hasn’t been a good way to not just display theses accomplishments, but most importantly find and collaborate with the people that need my specific spider web of talents. I believe Polywork is the tool that’ll try amplify my professional signal to the world.
The Polywork Multiverse
“Linkedin has long dominated the professional networking space forcing us all into a stuffy corporate identity reduced down to a single job title that hides all the wonderful things we actually do. Polywork empowers people to represent all aspects of their lives and what makes them who they are.” - Brianne Kimmel, Founding Partner at Worklife VC
Right off the bat, when you join Polywork you will notice it is unlike any other social media platform. It’s completely devoid of like buttons, follower counts, or any other stats that evoke a feeling of competition or shame. I really believe this is super important in this space, because we see it all the time on other platforms like Instagram and Facebook where people stop sharing openly because of shame and lack of “likes” and “followers”. This is your work. And I love how Polywork is essentially saying, “Forget what anyone else thinks, speak your truth and share your story”.
So what’s next for me? Well I’m building Crushing Transition, a community and offering of information products that helps veterans navigate their personal and professional journey back to civilian life. Guess where I’ll be sending all these veterans? Yep, right over to Polywork, to start sharing their truth and finding their new tribes. Stay tuned for more. And see you in the Multiverse.