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How Going Local Helped Me After A Move

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One of my omnipresent career subjects here is relocation because A) I moved cross country, B) I moved a lot within Silicon Valley, and C) There’s a good chance you’re going to have to do it at some point in your career and most likely for your career.  So suck it up and remember U-Haul has great deals.

It was after my second move within Silicon Valley (really), that I found myself contemplating a new commute, a new series of roads, and the potential to run into some of the horrible traffic in the area.  As I plotted out my new course, I remember how a co-worker of mine had mentioned a given expressway I hadn’t paid much attention to.  As I remember how he used to get to work, I realized this expressway wasn’t one I’d thought of (it’s Central Expressway, for those of you in the area), and it made my commute easier (and better than was was recommended by mapping software).

Soon, as I examined my new area, I began to realize just how much people who were native or had lived in the area knew of local roads.  I found out about shortcuts and expressways (where others just went to the freeway), traffic patterns, and more.  Being able to avoid jams, freeway parking lots, and more, was certainly welcome.

Of course when you think about it, when you move to an area – or consider one – you do want to talk to the locals that you know or meet.  They kind of know how things run and how things really work in wherever you’ll end up.

I strongly recommend that if relocation is in your future, take extra time to talk to people who live in the area you’re working in.  Go local, go native, go and talk to them and think like them:

  • Find out about the commute, the public transport, etc.  They’ll obviously complain (I never met anyone who liked public transport in their town), but you’ll learn a lot.  Ask what they use.
  • Find out about traffic patterns, timing, how bad weather is handled, etc.  That will help out a lot in your commute.
  • Go beyond just travel and find out about restaurant, schools, libraries, and other resources.  They have a lot to share too.
  • For that matter, “go local” and inquire about cons, comic shops, and other cool places that aren’t int the travel guides but fit you.

If you want to know an area, go local and go to the natives there.  It makes a big different.  It’s certainly meant a richer life for me – and a helluva easier set of commutes . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

How Blogging Helps Your Career #1 – Presence

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I blog.  You kind of noticed that because you’re reading one.  Or you could go to NerdCaliber, or to my own site.  I’ve been doing it for years now, and it’s definitely helped my career.

Which of course is where I’m taking this all kind of meta and blogging about how blogging helped my career.  Which of course may also help my career.  We’re in deep, Inception-meme territory here, people.

So, when you ask is blogging for you and is it going to help your professional geek career, I wanted to share what it’s done for me – which is quite a bit.

First, blogging is a presence, a beacon that says “here I am, this is me.”

It’s easy to get lost in the shuffle in your career, because there’s so many people doing what you do.  it’s easy to be forgotten by recruiters because there’s a huge pile of resumes in front of them and their eyes are glazing over.  It’s easy to be looked over by a client or a boss or anyone else because you’re just not that distinct.

A good career, be it one inside a company, or your own business where you need to attract customers, is one founded on being visible.  People need to know you, people need to know who you are, people need to remember you.  Visibility and being memorable are just as important as anything else in your career, and in some ways (perhaps sadly) more important since no matter how great you are, it doesn’t help if people forget you two minutes after finding out about you.

A blog is one way to solve that.

Think of how memorable you are if you blog.  You may have a website you blog and at people will remember it for the URL, and the content, and perhaps the cute pictures of your Corgi dressed as Tyrion from Game of Thrones*.  You have, in short, become memorable by the act of establishing something, something people can recall and find again.

Even if you’re not up for your own blog, you can blog elsewhere to establish a presence, credibility, and to post those Corgi pictures**.   This helps you have most of the advantages of a blog, while sharing in camaraderie and/or helping out someone with their site.  You’re still there, visible, with a given location for people to visit.

There, visible, is a giant shout out “I am here, here are memorable things!”  Hopefully they’re good memorable things, but you are at least memorable and established.

For me, blogging has definitely had a benefit of making me more memorable.  People read my blog entries at various sites.  People remember me.  Recruiters comment on my recipe posts.  I am remembered.

So try blogging and announce yourself to the world.  Sure you may not be big or famous (who really will be), but you’ll shine a lot brighter than those who don’t.

Takeaways and To Dos:

  • If you’re not sure about blogging, give it a try at some other sites.
  • Your main personal site doesn’t have to be a blog, but be sure it links visible to places you do blog.
  • Decide when and how to share information on your blogging – it may not always appeal or help with your target audience.
  • Blogging has to be regular and relevant for people to pay attention.  I strongly recommend doing something you truly believe in.
  • It doesn’t have to be professional for you to be remembered, but again keep your overall self-image in mind.
  • If you want it to be a good establishment of your presence, a bright shining beacon, it has to be traceable back to you.  If you want to keep your blogging anonymous, then it won’t help.

Let me close with this: It’s a Corgi named Tyrion.  So close.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

 

* If you do this, PLEASE send me pictures.
** If someone had a website dedicated to fantasy costumes for Corgis, you’d go there, you know it.

Christmas With The Service Outage

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Remember Christmases when the outages of Netflix or Steam wouldn’t have been factors?  It was only a few years ago when it wouldn’t have been as noticed or even regarded.

Of course now we can add large-scale technical glitches to other holiday annoyances like non-working Christmas lights, traffic, closed businesses, and crowded airports.  I wonder how used we’ll get to them.

I imagine not very.  We expect instant service from our technology, even if we usually accept much less.  However I imagine Netflix and Valve know this and will work to correct things for next year.

Merry Christmas to everyone!

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.