This afternoon my coworker and I struck up a conversation on how old we were getting in relation to the Internet. Jessica shared a story about how she had to convince her first two employers to include their web addresses on their marketing materials so that donors could find them (you know, way back in '02).

Two thoughts came to my mind from this discussion.

First: Wow, we're fortunate to live during a time when we can watch something as great as the Web mature. With the exception of the French Revolution, it's rare that people get to experience a technology or trend completely reorganize the way every part of society operates.

Second: People, organizations and businesses need to actively think "How can others find me?" -- a notion that would have sounded odd a few generations before when findability was baked into the social structure of a village or into the authority of a Yellow Pages phonebook.

So, what can you do now to be "findable" on an ever growing Web?

Make a big digital footprint.

1. Reserve your domain name
2. Register your username on popular web services
3. Link to your various profiles online

And this goes for both your business and your person.

By reserving you or your brand's accounts (Mashable has a great article on this) and user names on a variety of services, you're helping to build a larger footprint online. So, when someone searches on YouTube for "Joel Ballezza", they get me instead of a "no results found" page or some giggling babies.

The same thing goes for Twitter account, Facebook and the like.

In a thoughtful way, try to build out your digital footprint so that people will know how to find you.