Promoting Professional Geekery #25: Reviews

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We want to have a world with more fan-to-pro types, more professional geeks, more happy people doing what they like for money within certain legal and ethical boundaries.  Indeed we spend a lot of time trying to improve ourselves professionally to live our dream jobs.

One thing you can do to keep the dream alive is to make sure people get their hands on the right books and resources and that means reviews and more.  In short, all those books and websites you use, you should review so people know about them (or avoid them).

There's a lot of great books out there, a lot of tools, a lot of websites.  If a person wanted to start their dream career what they need is out there now.  It's just concealed by ignorance, a huge amount of choice, and everything else on the internet (basically porn, cats with captions, and ponies).

You are the person that can cut through through the dross, through the confusion, through the LOLCats, and make a difference.  You can set people on the right path.

You do it by reviewing and promoting things that are worth it.

  • If you do any blog whatsoever on your career, make it a point to review good resources on it in lengthy, excruciating detail.  Let me be clear – if you do a career blog, reviews are virtually necessary.
  • Put reviews at amazon.com and other websites.  In fact it can often be the same review as above.
  • If it's a resource that's on Yelp, review it there.
  • If you do a review on a blog or website, tell the author so they know.  It helps the improve, promote, and you may make a new contact, friend, or grateful sycophant.  If your review is bad, well, then use your own discretion.

But what to review?  I mean do you review everything?  Maybe, but for some of us we'd never stop reviewing.  So here's my advice so your reviews target the right resources for progeeks.

Review the very good.  If something is exceptionally awesome, make sure it gets a good review, make sure you tell the author, etc.  Let people know of the best.  This is also helpful if it's a hidden gem.

Review the popular job resources. If something is amazingly popular, and if you're really into reviewing things, then make sure you review it.  It doesn't matter if it's good or bad, you want people to know.

Review the horrible.  If something turns out to be bad, disappointing, and should be avoided, then it's worth a review in order to warn people away.  Yes, you'll want to be civil and mature, but it's worth it as a warning.

What's not in here is the mediocre.  Good reviewing of resources tends to gloss over the unremarkable because it's neither worth promoting or warning off, nor known enough to be of your concern.  Don't feel you have to review every book or website – unless you're into that kind of thing.

Promote Professional Geekery by helping people live their dreams – with the right tools.

Also, if you want some books to recommend, well . . .

– Steven Savage

 

 

 

Focused Fandom Countdown: 9 weeks to go

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So where am I on? "Focused Fandom: Fanart, Fanartists, and Careers."  Well first, late with this post – I was a bit under the weather.

First of all, if you noticed the header, it got pushed out two weeks.  I'm quite busy and am likely to be changing apartments – which easily kills a weekend.  So I figured better to delay it ahead of time.

Our big lesson for the week?  Well that has to do with the rescheduling – namely, plan ahead to add space for the unexpected.

Last book I did for the series I plowed through it.  I worked weekends.  I did an entire book in 3 months.  Yes, I did it – but it doesn't mean it

In giving myself more time on the second book, I got under the delusion that I'd be fine – but just adding extra time doesn't mean you're estimating well, preparing for interruptions, etc.  If I didn't have a self-imposed deadline, it'd be one thing, but . . .

So when you're doing your own projects remember – don't just set aside time, if you at all have a deadline, project ahead, estimate your time, try and get some sense of hours, days, etc. to work.  Think ahead about interruptions.

Then?  add about 10-30% time onto that.  Seriously, rare indeed is the person who gets their time estimates right.  Take it from a Project Manager.

Next book?  I still want to keep putting these out reguarly (I'm thinking every 6 months), but you can bet I'm going to put timelines and estimates on that just to be sure I'm not full of it . . .

– Steven Savage

 

Geekonomic News 2/13/2012

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Record unemployment for youth in America – as in worse in 60 years.  Oddly (or impressively) many are positive, which may actually help them weather this.  However unless there are some changes, the impact of the economic stupidity of the last decade is going to last a generation.

Politically, and by "politicially" I mean "usually talked about by people with no clue," entitlements are often controversial and usually associated with urban areas.  The reality is quite different.

– Steven Savage