Avatar photoSteven Savage

News of the Day 11/11/2009

by

Career
When not to do things for free – A little advice, since we often do things for free for our careers. (I myself like what one friend said, that it's better to say 'no charge' than free).

What NaNoWriMo teaches you about Sustainability – Excellent article on how one experience can translate to another – including fannish ones.

Mobile:
Widely differing estimates of Droids sold – At this rate I'm going to back off and see what happens, battling numbers like this just raise the confusion level.

Publishing:
A good analysis of how social media taking news local. A good read with a lot of lessons you can extend to many industries.

Social Media:
I always say keep track of people who do middleware and foundational tech. Vivaty announces it's Social Gaming Platform tool. Might be worth checking out job-wise.

Technology:
HP acquires 3Com – for a big fee. This puts them in good stead to compete with Cisco and represents an amazingly expensive move in a bad economy. They're either desperate or (more likely) confident. I'm amazed to see a deal this big, so I'm betting it's more thought out. Important if you work in networking (or at any of the companies involed).

Video Games:
A few details leaked on Microsoft's Project Natal? Not much to go on.

Playdom raises $43 million to develop new products – AND acquire other companies. Sounds like they've got plans brewing, and $43 million is a nice amount of money that a low-overhead company can do a lot with. Keep the resumes ready – and wonder what they'll do in light of EA's obvious strategy change . . .

– Steven Savage

Convention Idea – Speak to Parents, Teachers, and more

by

(The rest of the Convention Idea series is here).

I love convention professional events, as you've pretty much guessed.  I've  certainly done enough in the past, and am always looking for new things to do and new ideas.

However I noticed one thing lately – convention events focused on professional issues such as writing careers, artists, etc. focus on the people doing the work and looking for jobs.  They focus in short, on the people who need the advice.

Read more

Convention Spotlight: Icon 34

by

The round-up of convention spotlights and ideas is here.

Icon is a long-running convention in
Cedar Rapids, IA, so it's no surprise it came up in my continuing
research on conventions with fan-to-pro elements.

In
fact, Icon is one of those smaller, intimate cons with a serious
pedigree.  Started by a University of Iowa's writers group, led by Joe
Haldeman himself, it stays firmly rooted in its literary/writing
background while expanding over time to cover more genres and media.

Icon stays old-school, delivering the kind of fan-to-pro events that never go out of style:

  • It delivers a writer-heavy experience by having panels covering all
    sorts of writing aspects – starting out, presentation, and more.
  • It goes out of its way to do events on how to get published in the first place.
  • It's recently experimented on adding portfolio preparation for
    artists to their lineup, expanding the offerings available.  Many
    conventions do portfolio reviews, but preparation is often an area
    forgotten.
  • It leverages it's smaller size (perhaps 350-400 people) to have intimate discussion groups and heavy audience participation. 

Icon
hits the classic notes for writers by delivering a broad range of
events to help them out – and isn't afraid to experiment and add new
ideas.  If you're in Iowa – and if you haven't ALREADY heard of them –
it sounds like they've got some good events, and know how to deliver. 
I'm going to keep an eye on what they're doing as it sounds like
they're looking to add new ideas . . .

– Steven Savage