SV Comic Con Roundup: Marketing Panel

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

First of all, sorry this comes late. It’s been awhile since I and my crew did the Silicon Valley Comic Con panels on self-publishing, and i’m only now reporting on it. It’s been a busy few weeks to say the least – you probably noticed a decrease in my blogging.

But now, with a lot of that behind me, let’s talk the latest addition to the speaking repertoire for my local crew of self-publishers – Marketing for Self-Publishers.

We’ve been speaking about self-publishing for years. The panel we do has been updated over time as we got feedback, as things changed, and as we adapted to new venues. But what my crew has also done has tried to speak on Marketing for years – but most people wanted Self-Publishing 101 (which is understandable, as its still new to people).

Finally, we got interest at SVCC, so we ran for it. And what we did is worth sharing.

First, yes, we had experienced Self-Publishers from our usual group, this time speaking on our Marketing experiences. We even had a one-page handout, like our usual Self-Publishing panel. What we varied was adding someone to give us a reality check.

Our panel included an experienced marketing professional, someone who’d been in the trenches of marketing in Silicon Valley. This person was there to check our advice, add things from their professional perspective, and discuss the bigger picture. In other words, they made sure our advice was applicable, unique cases weren’t discussed as if they were universal, and survivorship bias got shown the door.

I’ll cut to the chase – it was fantastic.

The usual speaking team did great, of course, providing validated advice with plenty of examples. Alone it would have been a pretty good panel, everyone was very aware and experienced, giving good examples. But when you throw in the Marketing Expert, it just went off the charts in quality.

What happened was we got into a rhythm, the authors discussing experiences, and then having the marketing professional give their take. That professional advice too things outside of the context of individual experience or just publishing, and into a good understanding of marketing. It meant that people heard what worked for us, but also helped them get the bigger picture of marketing.

I’m enthused enough I really want to repeat this panel. I also want to consider this model elsewhere – having specialists discuss a subject with a “non-specialist” expert to check them and expand their knowledge. A few ideas off the top of my head:

  • A digital artist panel – that includes a graphic tech expert.
  • A panel on writing techniques – with an expert on language history to discuss the history of writing patterns and such.
  • A panel on how to run a convention – with a professional manager or project manager (call me).

So great panel, great finding, and some advice for everyone to try.

Steven Savage

Opinion Columnists: Why?

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

As I would like this column to be timeless, I shall not mention what inspired it. So while skipping history, let me posit something: opinion columnists without some background and skill to have an opinion on are useless.

To write on opinions and viewpoints is fine, and useful. Having an opinion, understanding it’s an opinion, is a way yo ground what you say in context. Writing on it effectively is a gateway to help people understand your views and work with them or oppose them. To write an opinion also gives you the ability to look at your opinion – and change it or bolder it.

I’m fine with opinion columnists. I write enough.

But in time I’ve come to question professional opinion columnists, whose skill is . . . opinion columnist. Your opinions are based on your ability to have opinions and write about opinions. It creates a weird, inbred, thin-skinned world of people saying things with little grounding or reality. It comes close to being – and in some cases become – a grift.

A good opinion columnist is a person who has a grounding in something that’s relevant to more than having opinions and putting them on a page. Give me a scientist who has written peer-reviewed papers and done researches. Give me a writer who writes novels that can give opinions on the process. Give me a doctor whose done surgeries discussing the experience. Just don’t give me someone who’s only skill is writing about what they know.

In fact, maybe some columnists who are or were good at something should be watched warily to make sure that they don’t decline into being opinion-only.

A good opinion columnist is someone with a connection to the larger world. It may seem narrow or specialized, but we’re all a bit narrow and specialized, it gives us perspective and depth. Only those who are deluded think they know everything and can opine endlessly on it.

This is a good reminder for anyone that creates media. Being only good at creating media is going to limit you to recycling ideas, to regurgitating the past, and to shallow results. You need a gateway to connect you to the world to be able to connect your creations to the bigger picture.

You may expand your connections, but they will never be perfect. That’s fine. The ones you have ground your opinions so you can share them.

ADDENDUM: I find this relevant to many professions as well. My own profession, the ill-defined overlap of Scrum Master, Project Manager, and Program Manager, is one you need a connection to be good at. To just be good at Scrum or Project Management only goes so far – you need to be good at something else to ground it, like communications or business analysis or something. Anything general and abstract needs something to tie it to the world to be relevant.

Steven Savage

Steve’s Cooking: Bowl Meals

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

I’m continuing posting some of my favorite cooking tips and recipes for my fellow creatives and professionals. After all, we’ve got to eat and eat healthy, but we’re also busy, stressed, and 95% caffeine. We don’t have time for fancy stuff but we also don’t want to live on corn chips.

So let me talk about one of my favorite meals where delicious, fast, and healthy meet – Bowl Meals

Bowl Meals are things we’e always had before – a big bowl of food that’s an entire meal. Bibimbap, Poki Bowls, your average stir-fry, etc. are great examples of this near-universal meal type. Throw it all in a bowl and eat.

But how do you come up with stuff that’s fast, healthy, and delicious. Fortunately, I have a formula.

Steve’s Bowl Meal Formula

1 1/2-2 Cups of vegetables, at least one cup being healthy greens. You can steam these easily in the microwave with a bowl with a bit of water, microwaved 3-4 minutes.

  • For greens try spinach, broccoli, kale, cabbage, or brussel sprouts.
  • For other vegetables try shredded carrots, diced onions, chopped peppers, bean sprouts, and other non-starchy vegetables.

1 cup of a cooked healthy grain. Try brown rice or a mixed grain, maybe even noodles!

3/4 to 1 cup of legumes or a similar healthy protein like tofu.

  • Experiment with this a lot. I use garbanzo beans for their solidity, but also use baked tofu, green peas, and black eyed peas which have a fascinating strong taste.

A few extras like sesame seeds, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, olives, and other kicky and interesting additions.

Your favorite sauce or spice sprinkle. My favorite three are:

  • 2 Tbsp of kimchi.
  • 1 Tbsp low-sodium soy sauce, 1 Tbsp lemon juice, a dash of hot sauce or oil.
  • 1/2 Tbps gochujang, 1/2 tbsp low-sodium soy sauce, 1 Tbsp rice wine vinegar. If you don’t know what gochujang is, its a fermented pepper paste you can find in Korean markets, and it’s amazing.

This is easy to put together with canned, purchased, or premade and frozen ingredients. You can also scale this in bulk, if only by just dumping everything into a big bowl and having people use a spoon. I use this simple formula a lot, and have a few favorite variants I go into later:

The reason Bowl meals work is because this formula is:

  • Nutritionally balanced.
  • Satisfying with plenty of flavors and fiber.
  • Easy to make. Experiment and write down your best findings to repeat.

Now a few tips:

  • If you’re not a mostly-vegan like me and/or just want some meat in this, add about 1/2 a cup of cooked/shredded meat or a cooked/hardboiled egg, but remove about 1/4 cup of grain and 1/4 cup of the legumes.
  • If you’re not up for a lot of grains (sometimes you want a less carby meal) just make it half legumes and half vegetables. I’ve done this a lot. If you’re using meat, just cut the grain and up the legumes.
  • Try various “extras.” For instance, one of my strange findings is that raisins and sun-tried tomatoes are amazing together.
  • Learn to make sauces and freeze them so you can throw them on the bowls as you make them. Home-made sauces are a good bet as you can make them healthier and with lower sodium.
  • Stock up with canned beans, get fresh greens (or freeze them), make and freeze rice and/or pasta, get those easy pre-heat rice packs, and if you want to use meat cook it in bulk and freeze it. You can then just churn various bowl meals out.

Now two of my favorite bowl meals:

  • 1 cup of rice, 2 cups of spinach shredded, half a can of garbanzo beans, 2 Tbsp kimchi. Stir.
  • 1 cup of rice, 1 1/2 cups of steamed broccoli, half a block of tofu. Sauce is 1/2 Tbsp gochujang, 1/2 tbsp low-sodium soy sauce, 1 Tbsp rice wine vinegar – mix the sauce separately and mix it into the rice first.

So there you go, one of my healthy, fast, and delicious cooking meals. Give it a try and let me know your best findings.

Steven Savage