Promoting Professional Geekery #26: Do A Side Project

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Trying to help people see the virtue of professional geekery is often best done by showing results.  So if you want people at work to see the value in your geekery (and maybe get a few more geeks to stand up and wave the nerd flag high), why not start a side project at work that relates to your geekery?  It let’s you show off with a payoff.

Try things such as:

  • Like games?  Maybe you can lead a program to do ramification.
  • Like anime?  Maybe you know enough to suggest some artists, marketing companies, and more your company should work with.
  • Technical geek?  Come on if you can’t think of something to propose at work you’re not even trying!
  • Science geek?  Who knows what additional products, experiments, training, newsletters, etc. you can propose.
  • General pop culture geek?  Maybe it’s time to start a viewing party or movie outing now and then to build morale.

Take your geekery and make it pay off – with a side project.

What does this do?

  • It of course helps the place you work and and the people you work with (as long as it pays off).
  • It helps open some minds about new possibilities.
  • It shows the professional value of your geekiness
  • It reminds others to stand up and make their geekiness heard – and do something with it.

Results speak for themselves.  So remind people of the professional power of your utter full nerdity by making it pay off!

– Steven Savage

 

Tablet News 2/21/2012

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What a fascinating bit of news from Tabletopia!

Nook launches it's new Tablet, which is really the more expensive tablet with less memory, and puts it in competition with the Kindle Fire. B&N isn't quitting, and this does get them some nice attention – and it's intriguing how they seem to be aiming at tablets first, in a way. I almost feel they're downplaying the reading aspect.

TAKEAWAY: B&N is still taking on Amazon (and in a way, everyone else). I'd think their Nook division might be a good place to seek employment, and of course if you e-Publish, you want to be on B&N.

Microsoft appears to have bitten the bullet and released Office for iPad. Now my question here is what they're going to charge for this?

TAKEAWAY: It does show Microsoft is wisely moving with the times – and knows where the money is. What competition will this provide – and face – on the iPad?

– Steven Savage

Focused Fandom Countdown: 8 Weeks To Go

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So where am I on Fanart, Fanartists, and Careers?

I just finished the resource sections.  I wanted to have a good amount of useful links and books for people to use, which actually was more challenging than I thought.

Since artistic careers go in a lot of different directions, I ended up having to ask myself what would be useful to the broadest audience . . . which is not always what it seems.  Then there are "contrarian" resources, like certain books, that deserve mention only for that very fact.  You can also put in too much or too little.

So I used an advanced system called "gut feelings" for this, erring on the side of "give people one good option if you're sure, 3 options if you're not."

That's one issue with a book like this – you have to find out what's useful to people.  In the end what my books are are mental toolkits to help people in their careers.  If I don't provide the right tools – or turn it into a swiss army knife of confusion – then I'm not doing my job.

So the best method was to include the truly useful, and options when needed.  It's a balancing act, but I think it was worth it.

Of course, I need to do a gut check on it all the time . . .

So 8 weeks to go.  next up, a final editing run, then off to the editor.  That also means interviewees should be getting a beta copy in about 2-3 weeks!

– Steven Savage