fandom

News of the Day 7/25/2009

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Career:
What to do if you have no references or work experience – A good set of suggestions, excellent for fans who excell at DOING things.

Economics/Freakonomics/Geekonimics:
Job losses are higher than expected – Very interesting, from the WSJ. This definitely points to potential persistent unemployment post-recovery.

China's government leveraging its soverign wealth fund to encourage Chinese businesses to expand and acquire overseas – Or more simply, they get cash and support branching out – and you can that may include your country. Didn't see this coming, but I expect that this means the Chinese government thinks its safe to do this and wants to cut any losses or potential losses from other areas affected by the global downturn. Upshot is this could be an economic game changer and put more power in China's hands.

Why companies must get back to venture capital and R&D – Essentially large companies now rely on parterships with startups and smaller companies to innovate. And they're not. A good read to make you think – and wonder where that Chinese money may flow . . .

Multimedia:
Microsoft taps big names in anime for Halo video collection – Sort of what was done with the Animatrix. Good multimedia synergy there (and I imagine that the studios want the money). There's some good story potential with Halo anyway, so I sense a potential success, and further encouraging multimedia synergy. Thought for your career – what companies could benefit from more synergy, and what can you do to encourage it (and get a job or contract . . .).

Publishing:
Amazon will be target of a class-action suit over the book deletion – The argument seems to involve property rights and set expectations. The firm in question specializes in such suits. As usual, watch this space – this can also persist the incident in people's minds and give competitors an advantage, as well as settle (or open) some legal issues. The ethical issues already seem pretty apparent.

Writing:
Geeky things you don't know about romance writers.

Video Games:
Game Developer's free 2009 game career guide available – So, go for it. Warning – lots of ads.

Analysis of video game market – Looking flat overall this year, with some nasty bumps – and some of the big boys may take hits. I disagree casual gamers may pull back significantly as their overall investment is likely less as it is – and much casual gaming is lower priced.

– Steven Savage

Fandom Achievement List

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So you're looking at your fandom experience, at your hobbies, and asking yourself "OK, what did I learn and what can I do?" so you can think about your career or add to your resume.  It's not always easy – you've done a LOT, but you may keep thinking over the same two or three skills.

There's a trick I've found that works well: an Achievements list first.

Sit down and list all the things you've accomplished in fandom: running a convention department (and list every year you did it), creating a website, editing a fanfic series, doing a group cosplay, etc.  Put those down on paper or type them up in a word processor or spreadsheet – I recommend a spreadsheet (more below)

Now that you've done that – and gone as far back as you can – next to every achievement, list all the skills and abilities you used JUST for that achievement.  Don't worry if you repeat yourself, list them for every achievement, even if you put "sewing" next to every single costume you finished.  If you used a spreadsheet, you can create a separate cell for every skill, keeping them all in one big column.

Now sort through the lists of skills and see which stand out – which keep popping up and which stand out (this is why a spreadsheet helps).  You now have a huge list of what you've done, a rough idea of how often you use a skill, and ideas of skills you may never have thought of.

So if 90% of your fan/geek activities involve writing convention program booklets, you may have a sign of your skills and interests there.  When "photography" pops up more than you expect thanks to your cosplay work, you may have a career option – or some skills to try and use on the job.

Of course, this method also works fine on your career too, geeky or not, but I felt introducing it this way had a bit more impact!  Besides, we usually are more aware of our careers than we are of what we do in our fandom, since we're usually busy having fun in the latter.

– Steven Savage

Fandom: The Project Edge

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You're a geek, a fangirl, fanboy, otaku, otariiman, sports nut, etc.  You're in a job search.  You'd like to leverage your fannish interests for your next job, but you're busy trying to get the whole search thing working right.

Good job searches are like projects – organized, measured, evaluated, with goals in mind.  Being a fan, you're probably far better at this than many people – and maybe more than you realize.

If you feel disorganized or aren't sure how to approach your job search, step back for a moment and look at the fannish projects you've done.

  • Did you organize a convention or part of a convention?
  • Do you oversee and run a role-play group?
  • Do you manage a community with events?
  • Do you sit down and reguarly and consistently make AMVs, fanfic, fanart, etc.?

Then guess what – you know how to do a project.  In fact, I'd lay odds that everyone reading this right now is, on average, better at organizing and getting results than they realize.  It's just that this is so often expressed in our hobbies and fannish activities that we never realize, frankly, how good we are at it.

So, if you're trying to organize your job search (and organized job searches are successful job searches), step back for a moment and look at what you organized in your hobbies.  What lessons did you learn?  What skills do you have?  Who can you call on for help?  What resources did you use?

If you want that geeky job, make your job search a project.  To make that project, take a moment and look at your hobbies and the projects you've done there.  You're probably far more organized than you ever realized – leverage that.

– Steven Savage