Your Office and Geek Pride

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I'm not one for decorating my cube at work – mostly as my ideal decoration is printouts.  But I want to take a moment to praise the decorating of cubes for progeeks and profans.

I could talk about motivation, reminders, etc.

But instead I'd like to praise the geek pride of it.

When you've got your baseball figures, your anime figures, your posters, your pictures, your  bust of Optimus Prime, you're saying "I am a geek and I am proud of it."  You're telling people about yourself – perhaps even exposing yourself to ridicule – as well as opening a dialogue about what you like.

This is a good thing (done with some forethought of course, depending on what your fandom is).

This is making a statement about who you are and what you like – proudly and openly – at a place that your livelihood likely depends on.  It takes courage, and it asserts who you are.

So I say go for it.  Let people know who you are – in fact, if you plan your "fan display" carefully you can generate dialogue and respect for you as well.

Even that bust of Optimus Prime can benefit your career if you know, for instance, the head of IT is a big Transformers fan . . .

– Steven Savage

It’s About Information

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99% of fandom, geekery, otakudom, etc. is information.

One secret of building a geeky career is realizing that most of what we love – and thus what we want to do – relates to information.  Games on video and video games, fiction in text or animation, movies or films.  It's all encoded, processed, delivered, and shot into our brains.

So if you're looking for a geeky job, there's a good chance it's entirely or partially about  the creation, delivery, and access of information-heavy resources.  A video game on DLC is no different in this way than the latest song downloaded from a band.

I realized that there are three sides of information delivery: The Information itself, the Creation (and alteration) of information,  and the Transmission of information.  In examining the career to turn your fandom into payday, ask yourself which of the three (or all?) are you on?

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Avoid the Peter Principle

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The Peter Principle is a famous idea that, simply, people get promoted until they're in a position they're simply not good at.  Too many people are promoted to their level of incompetence.

This is often used in many jokes, but it's actually something I take seriously.  I take it seriously as I've seen it in action.

I also take it seriously because it scares me, as it is even more important to career geeks and profans like us.  We, yes we, the cool and creative and hip and obsessive people are in even MORE danger of the Peter Principle affecting us.  We are, in short, in more danger of being promoted far beyond our level of competence.

The danger is that we often like what we do and can miss when we're bad at it.

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