Promoting Professional Geekery #21: Start A Geeky Group At Work

Your work place may be the geekiest thing ever or it may be so straight-laced people fear there's going to be an office comedy made of it.  No matter what, it's a great place to form a geeky group – and a great way to support professional geekery.

Think of all the things you can do at work that bands people together for geeky interests, or just band geeks together.  A gaming group, a group for programming arduinos, an anime viewing group, what have you.  Why not found one – you and all your fellow employees may enjoy it.

It's also a great way to support professional geekery.  Yes it may be fun and relaxing, but it's also a huge professional advantage:

  • It lets you meet your fellow geeks at work – which lets you band together to work on your careers as well.
  • It makes people at work aware of the geeky contingent there – and shows them in a good light (well, hopefully).
  • It gives people away to meet the professional geeks at work and get to know them.  You might find a few unrealized professional geeks there.
  • It raises your profile at work by being so involved in bringing people together.
  • It shows off your skills and interests, which might open opportunities for you to apply them.
  • It helps promote other geeky interests at work – who knows what will emerge next from the fertile mind of your fellow progeeks?

There's really no downside as long as you do it right. 

Steven Savage

SOPA Announcement

Fan To Pro will not be blacking out in protest of SOPA- as I want us to be covering it.

Let me say that I find SOPA and PIPA frankly, dangerous.  Ham-handed, poorly-worded, overly-broad, they're invitations to abuse that in the end wouldn't reducy piracy or much else.

Catch up here and see what can be done – and find out how bad it is.

– Steven Savage

Yeah, About SOPA . . .

It'll be back apparently in February.

Also the MPAA and Lamar Smith are both clueless and hypocritical.

Actually even with SOPA back, every delay makes it easier to kill since the diminishing pro-SOPA/PIPA forces are not sympathetic.  But it looks like Lamar is going to be back at it, and of course we'll keep you updated since this is a major legal, ethical, geek, and career issue.

Steven Savage