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Geek As Citizen: Boost The Signal – Advanced

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Fractal

Last column I discussed the basic ways we could Boost The Signal on good works – reviewing, telling people, gifting/donating, and talking to the creator(s) of the works. Those are basics most anyone can do.

But if you’ve designated yourself a kind of amateur Ambassador for the work or works in questions, there are ways to take it even farther if you’re so inclined.

These ideas require more commitment, and may not be for the casual fan. These are for the dedicated person who wants to take time and make serious effort – something we aren’t always able to do

Team Up: The creator(s) of the work (who, I mentioned you should contact) may be glad to have someone help them out with promotions. Help update a web page, work a table at a convention, whatever. If you believe (and have the time), lend a hand – you’ll probably make new friends too.

Do A Panel: Conventions need panels and events and you and your fellow fans can band together to talk to folks about whatever it is you’re trying to Boost The Signal for. Run a fan panel and let people know why you fan over what you do. By the way, make sure you have a good handout and list of resources.

Run An Event: Maybe what you like is more an event thing, like an RPG. So, run the game or demonstrate the technology at a convention.

Team Up With Others: Perhaps a local convention, a blog, or what have you is willing to do panels or roundups on obscure or notable work. Take advantage of this to team up with others and promote Ten Comics You Should Read, or Five Great Card Games No One Knows About.

(By the way, based on what I learned from the rest of Crossroads Alpha, lists like that get attention, sometimes for years.)

Review: Do you review and critique work? Do you post at websites on such things? Well, go write a (realistic) review of why you like something at the appropriate website. I can point you to a few if you like – and even if you don’t write critique, why not give it a shot and try?

Advise: Sure you talked to the creator or creators of what you’re trying to promote, but what else can you do to help? Maybe your art skills can help with a website redesign. Your knowledge of marketing may let you give tips. Team up and help out!

Network: Hook a creator up with people – always a favorite past time of myself. Help them out by introducing them to appropriate people. Bring them into your LinkedIn Network. Find some way to connect them with others.

Drop The Hint: If there’s a book, comic, game etc. that you like, suggest your local store carry it. It can’t hurt to suggest it after all – and you might be able to provide more advice on things to carry. If you’ve contacted the creator(s) of the work you’re boosting, you could even arrange appearances.

If you really want to take Ambassadorship all the way, get really active, dig in, and share the wonders you found – and help out. Sure, it may seem like you’re just one person, but you never know what difference you can make until you try.

Who knows, you might have a future in PR . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Link Roundup

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Got quite a few links here.

MUST READ: Weird Al’s lessons for the Music industry.  Actually this is good for most people – multiple exclusive partnerships, permission builds goodwill, vinyl still matters (as does any hard copy I’d say), everyone’s path is different, being a nice person is worth it.

More on the plans for Mile High to Ditch San Diego Comic Con.  They are going, but there’s still issues.

Adam Corolla takes on patent troll – and won’t let them drop a lawsuit.  I am now forced to like Adam Corolla.

– Steven Savage

Failcess – Vegan Pizza

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So this is probably one of my weirder experiments. I tried to make a totally vegan cheese pizza. It also happened to be gluten free or potentially gluten free if you want to go for the whole pop hypochondria thing.  If this sounds weird, you don’t know me.

So, this potential mad creation of mine was . . . failure and success.  Let’s take a look.

Cheese

The cheese is purely from the Forks Over Knives Cookbook. It’s simple and it was “cheeseque” – good enough to use as cheese in something that needs a taste kind of like cheese.  It wasn’t cheese but, well, close enough for this.

  • One white onion, diced
  • One red pepper, seeded, diced
  • One tablespoon peanut butter
  • 1 cup nutritional yeast.

Just puree all of these in a blender- it’s surprisingly easy. I puree the red pepper and onion in batches, and it’s surprisingly “liquidy.” I then blend in the peanut butter and then the yeast.

Sauce

I used a can of tomato sauce. Because I was being lazy.

Crust

  • 3 cups besan (chickpea) flour (by the way, this awesome high-protein flour is great for nutrtion, cooking, chips, pudding, and more)
  • 6 tsp xanthan gum
  • 1 tbsp baking powder.
  • 1 cup water

Mix the dry ingredients together, then slowly stir in the water. Finally coat your hands with chickpea flour and knead it a bit. Then place it in a nonstick pizza pan.

To cook this, I tried

  1. Cook the crust for 8 minutes.
  2. Remove, add tomato sauce as needed (about a cup)
  3. drizzle cheese sauce (about 3/4 of it)
  4. Cook for 12 minutes.

And how did it come out?

Imagine an extremely lame homemade pizza. Dough wasn’t quite done, the tomato sauce soaked in, the sauce didn’t cook in well, everything was drippy. It tasted “eh” but didn’t quite blend so was ultimately unsatisfying.

Except . . . it was recognizable as a pizza. Just a really bad one.  It was a failure as a pizza, but a success in that I made a completely vegan low-fat pizza that still had quite a protein kick due to the chickpea flour and nutritional yeast.  It was just a bad pizza.

Failure as a pizza, but at least it was a pizza.

So I think there are ways to improve this:

  1. The crust probably needs a bit of a sweetener and/or salt.  Not a bad idea as the only sodium source was the sauce – and next time i’ll use homemade.
  2. I’d also flip the crust over before adding toppings so they don’t soak in so much and the other side gets to cook.
  3. Go easy on the tomato sauce.  Also crushed tomatoes may work as well.
  4. I wonder if I could thicken the cheese sauce a bit, perhaps chilling it, cooking it and then adding some arrowroot.
  5. Overall it needs to be baked longer – probably 8-10 minutes, flip it over and add toppings, and then 15 or so.

So a failure on one level, a success on another.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.