Promoting Professional Geekery #40 – Help A Professional Association With Communications

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(For more Promoting Professional Geekery, see this Roundup of past columns.)

You know I’m big on joining professional associations as a progeek (I’ve been talking about it throughout this series). But beyond hooking up and doing some promotion, you can also dig a bit deeper and apply your communications skills and abilities.

Professional Associations have newsletters, blogs, and websites. Perhaps you can contribute to one – with your uniquely personal and progeeky point of view. There’s doubtlessly some things you can write on, so help spread the word to reach your fellows – and help people understand them.

Not up for doing a little content? Then apply your technical, clerical, or other skills to run the engines of communication. If you can put up web pages, configure blogs, or know Mail Chimp, you can help your professional association with cutting edge communications.

None of this appeals to you (or you don’t have the time)? Hook your Association up with some of your fellow geeks that can. Your friend who’s a master of Android can write a blog post about, well, Android. Your web guru friend who normally does sites for indie bands can jump in with the website. You help your association, your friends (who get practice, references, and maybe a bit of out-of-the-box thinking), and you do it all while maintaining your busy schedule.

All of these activities ensure that your association has progeeky content and contacts, so you can help them out – and help them keep in touch with progeeky content and contacts. This is especially good if the association needs to connect with the geek/fan/otaku side more, or is in danger of slipping away from it. Think of it as a subtler form of my suggesions for evangelinecing for or to the association.

Of course you also get to practice various skills, increase your contacts, and get other benefits yourself! So keep this optioin in mind when you want to promote progeekery.

– Steven Savage
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach for professional and potentially professional geeks, fans, and otaku. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

 

Facebook Phone? Time To Hang Up

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Yeah, if you’ve been kicking around there’s intermittent rumors about Facebook adding a phone to their repeitoire.  This probably has some of us thrilled and thinking of the career options, but let me say it’s not making a lot of sense geekonomically.

  • First, Facebook is dealing with the recent IPO debacle.  Any new radical move isn’t going to instill confidence and may not instill curiosity.
  • A move to hardware beyond a partnership is going to be insanely hard.  The competitors are established, the market’s margins aren’t the greatest, and Facebook has rep issues.  Are they honestly going to compete with, say, Apple?
  • What more can they offer that others can’t?  Just integration with their services.  They can offer that many ways.
  • They’d have to gear up to do it, and that requires burning money, making alliances, and hiring people who think this is going to work.  I’m not so sure on a lot of this.

If Facebook does indeed go for the phone, I’d be cautious in many ways.  I see a lot of strikes against them in doing this, so if that recruiter comes a-calling, be skeptical.

Oh, and imagine what happens if they try this and fail . . .

– Steven Savage