Professional Geekery

Promoting Professional Geekery #7: OK. So Write a Guide

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OK, I get it, I get it.  You're not up for writing an entire book promote progeekery, at least not right now.  So how can you leverage all those writing skills in promoting your love of turning hobbies into jobs, of turning fandom into careers?

Write a helpful guide to something relevant to progeekery.

There's probably plenty of things you could write on that'll help out current and future progeeks that aren't book-length.  These are more than a blog post, but less than the commitment to make a full book.

Consider:

  • Did you have a guide to a good resume?  Write it up.
  • Set up a photo gallery for your cosplay site?  Create a guide so people can do it easily.
  • Have a killer way to make a business card to promote your business?  Let' hear how you created that geeky ideal.
  • Have a job search guide for a given industry?  Write up your experiences so people can use it.
  • A guide to resumes for people into cosplay, or video games, or something else.

Where do you put this?  Well, consider:

  • Your website – and you better have a professional website – is a great place.  It shows employers/clients what you're good at and helps you be part your larger community.
  • See if any blogs, relevant fansites, etc. want to host it – you might find a side hobby doing that.
  • Try self-publishing since a lot of the platforms don't mind size – and set it to free.
  • Speak on your subject at a convention and hand out copies.

You've got a lot of knowledge.  So you're not up for a book (yet)?  Put that wisdom in a guide and release it to the world in guide form.

– Steven Savage

To those of you working on your resumes . . .

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Stop underselling yourself.

I'm serious.  I see a lot of resumes, and I'd honestly say 95% of them undersell the person in question.  Come to think of it, I rarely see a resume that's "just right."

So look, right now you can and do more than you think:

That one-off task on your last job still taught you a lot.

That hobby you have (hint, hint), probably taught you a lot of skills.

Those courses in college you don't think you're using, you may actually be using (take it from a Psych major).

So folks, let me plead – stop underselling yourself.  There's more to you than you realize.

This is one of the things that I see too much of in progeekery – we, the fans, the geeks, the otaku, who do so many things, never appreciate it.  Maybe if we stopped for a moment we'd see we could say a bit more about what we do, that we are a bit better than we think.

– Steven Savage

Promoting Professional Geekery #6: Write The Book

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I just spent three months writing a book.  You probably noticed that by the updates.

I know plenty of great writers, who do tons of blog posts, documents and, yes books.  During the time I was working on my latest book, a friend of mine wrote a novel TWICE as long and he's not even finished yet.

You probably have a professionally geeky book in you.  A Geek 2.0 book.  Something on both a career and your likely obsessive love of certain things.  Maybe it's on how you made your video game career into a real one, or your observations of the six kinds of comic book artists, or whatever.

So write the bloody thing and be done with it.  Promote professional geekiness by putting out a book.

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