writing

How Blogging Helps Your Career #10 – The Trophy Case

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(The roundup for the “How Blogging Helps Your Career Series” is here)

Ever been in an interview and wondered how you prove you know what you’re doing in that short time?

Ever tried to convince someone of your competence if, say, you’re trying to run a convention or help them with a project?

Ever wonder how, in the end, we can kind of ever prove in a few minutes that we’re good at things?  Because it seems way, way too much of our life involves that.  If you’ve ever been on the job search or tried to justify a promotion, you know what that’s like.

We have to show wins.  We have to show proof.  This is one reason I try and end every in-person interview by giving someone a copy of one of my books, because it’s hard to say “you can’t do project management” when I can self publish.*

The proof in many cases has to come quick, fast and solid.

That’s your blog.  Your blog is a trophy case.

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How Blogging Helps Your Career #9 – The Coffee Shop

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(The roundup for the “How Blogging Helps Your Career Series” is here)

So you’re blogging away.  You get feedback and suggestions.  You comment on other posts and others comment on yours.  You even meet people that contribute to your blog and vice versa.

Somewhere in all of this you find your running a small or community or are part of one.  And your mind hearkens back to every single person who ever told you you should network more.  Instead of that rising desire to scream at them “yes, I know everyone tells me that!” you realize you are doing that.

By blogging.

Blogging invites people in, invites them to communicate, creates dialogue.  By blogging you can do a lot of networking without thinking about it (and over-thinking about it).  Sure blogging lets you shout to the world, but it lets people talk back, dialogues begin, and some blogs even become comfortable places to discuss things.

You’re networking.  And that can help your career and ambitions.

Blogging is a coffee shop.

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Freedom of the Press When We’re All Press

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Freedom of the press is important to any democracy and indeed functional society.  We take it for granted in America, only discussing it in between our complaints about how awful news has gotten.

But as newspapers fade, as news changes (and merges with entertainment), as blogging alters what journalism is, then what is the press?  Certainly by broad definition there’s a lot more of it, and we often see laws disrespecting traditional press.

As “press” evolves, and has it’s conflict (which often seem to be someone-versus-bloggers), as entertainment and ratings keeps driving news (often to insanity), the question of what is the press and what freedom means will keep coming up.  Sadly, I expect them to come up after horrible occurrences and bad laws, but come up they will.

Of course it all comes down to freedom period.  But that’s a subject that is thornier than many realize, and too often people are a bit narrow on that whole freedom thing beyond their own concerns.

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/.