Convention Spotlight: Daishocon

Part of our continuing series on helping conventions add more professional and career events!  The roundup is here.

Daishocon is an anime and gaming convention in Wisconsin.  As you can guess from this being in Fan To Pro, Daishocon's head of programming has plans to make sure the convention caters to the fan-to-pro crowd along with the usual offerings!

The major innovation at Daishocon is to look at bringing in panelists who have written how-to guides – as opposed to people just speaking on careers, they're looking to bring in one or more speakers who have actually written books to help people in their careers – and who work in geeky areas like manga.

This is an innovation I strongly approve of – because there's many people who write on careers, art, anime, video games, and more.  Speaking on a career is one thing, but getting people who can write on it and communicate it is quite another.  This is an idea i'd like to see other conventions pursue.

Daishocon is also looking to host panels for "breaking in" to industries are properly represented as well – to make sure people get a good launch pad for their careers.

In central Wisconsin?  Give them a check.  I especially hope more "how to" writers get more attention in the con scene.  I am of course biased – but I admit it!

– Steven Savage

Go Farther: The next (big?) thing

Hoping to be the next JK Rowling, George Lucas, Gene Roddenberry, Gary Gygax, etc.?

I'm concerned in the wake of Harry Potter, and to a lesser extent Twilight, there's going to be efforts to duplicate the success of the same – with dismal results.  I already see people accused of being derivative of Stephanie Myer when they clearly weren't.  I see a lot of imitators of the above people, and little of the passion.

So what are people waiting for?  What's the next big thing (or small thing that feels big)  What does it need?

Synergy.  Three kinds in fact.

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Invest Versus Consume

In my various readings of econoblogs, I ran into a quote on one of the problems with the American economic downturn was people who consumed, but didn't invest.  This idea wasn't explored enough (and as I can't even remember where I read it, I suppose it could have done with more detail), but it got me thinking about investing versus consuming.

I want to explore the difference – and it's relevance to your career as a progeek and profan.

Read more