Advice

Geek Job Guru: Marketing Is Inevitable

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Marketing Is Inevitable

Ever get tired of how we pros “have to market”? You see ads all over the internet hawking things from megacorporation products to people’s webcomics. “Personal Branding,” a term I’m fond of, seems to be on it’s way to becoming a dirty word. If you’re looking for a job or working on your career, which is probably why you’re reading this, chances are you’re sick of being told to “market yourself.”

I’d even give odds at one point someone told you to “go market yourself/your book/etc.” and you responded with a rather creative use of obscenities.

We know we need to market ourselves these days. Gotta hustle the artbook. Have to make connections for the job. Time to get people to buy that indie game. The market changed five minutes ago and you have to refocus on a different audience. You may even work in marketing, which these days has to be a pretty crazy adventure to judge by my friends in the industry.

I’m entirely sympathetic and I’m a guy that enjoys marketing himself. We’d like to get away from it, probably because we’re tired of hearing about it all the time. “Marketing” is becoming like “Networking” in that everyone tells us we need to do it, and at this point we’d like them to dearly shut up about it.

Be it your career or your small business or your side gig, I’m sorry, marketing is inevitable as part of your job or jobs. It’s not going away any time soon barring societal collapse, and in that case we have lots of other problems. But knowing it’s inevitable I’d like to talk about why it became so inevitable in our daily lives and professions and even hobbies.

If we understand why we can’t avoid marketing, we can work it into our job search or our consulting business or whatever geeky ambition we have or hope for. We may not always like it, but we can see the outline of why this is almost inflicted on us and make it work.

Or at least tolerate it.

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Way With Worlds: Intelligent Life

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Intelligent Life

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum and at MuseHack]

I’m going to start by assuming the setting of your story has intelligent life in it. If not, well that sounds like a challenging write, and feel free to skip this part until you need it.  Or don’t because hey, you never know.

Now first, allow me to define intelligent life, so we’re on the same sheet of virtual paper here. Intelligent life is that form of life that can process information, adapt and retain this information, pass this information on to others, and possesses a level of self-consciousness or self-awareness. Intelligent life is essentially a kind of conscious computing, even if I personally dislike that simplistic terminology.

I would especially argue that intelligence contains a level of self-awareness as intelligence life as we think of itis self-modifying and self-directing. You can’t separate intelligence from consciousness, because someone has to “be in there” to be intelligent. “I think therefore I am” is also “I know I am as I think.”

With that all-to brief (and doubtlessly incomplete) journey into the philosophy of intelligence, let’s continue a to why it’s important. I’ll also try not to overdo the words “intelligent life,” but no promises here.

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Geek Job Guru: Don’t Take Your Role Model Personally

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Role Model

I’m a big advocate of having role models in your career (and for that matter, anything else). Role models provide people you can relate to, so you can understand them on an almost instinctive level, and then emulate what they did right. Role models show that success is possible so you can keep motivated and keep reaching even when you’re at your lowest. Role models show specific paths to success that you can follow.

Best of all, people who know they’re Role Models give actual, useful advice, write books, and so on.  A good Role Model may be such an information font they’re a kind of Orbital Bombardment of wisdom.

We geeks are often blessed with role models, and it’s a big part of geek culture. – I think because a lot of geek culture is achievement/activity based. There are people we look up to and admire, who inspire us. We can meet them at conventions, buy their biographies, and surf the internet to learn more about them. Rare indeed is the convention guest who at some point is asked about job options, or the head of a website or Maker Group who doesn’t end up providing career advice.

As much as I’m an advocate of using Role Models, I’d like to note their limits. No matter how good a Role Model someone is – and you can probably find several in your life – they have a limit.

Their limit is they’re a unique individual.

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