Wisdom Rot

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Remember that great advice you got ten years ago that is entirely irrelevant to your career and you wonder why you're still following it?  Remember that industry that would be perfect for your career that is now a smoking economic ruin of failed dreams, bad ideas, and lawsuits against the accounting firms?

Or do you remember that piece of advice that stuck with you since childhood?  That helpful concept that you got from someone much older than you that got it from some else?

We get experiences and advice that are useful for our lives, and useful at best for a limited time.  Some things are seemingly forever – some lessons are not.

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Convention Spotlight: Daishocon

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Part of our continuing series on helping conventions add more professional and career events!  The roundup is here.

Daishocon is an anime and gaming convention in Wisconsin.  As you can guess from this being in Fan To Pro, Daishocon's head of programming has plans to make sure the convention caters to the fan-to-pro crowd along with the usual offerings!

The major innovation at Daishocon is to look at bringing in panelists who have written how-to guides – as opposed to people just speaking on careers, they're looking to bring in one or more speakers who have actually written books to help people in their careers – and who work in geeky areas like manga.

This is an innovation I strongly approve of – because there's many people who write on careers, art, anime, video games, and more.  Speaking on a career is one thing, but getting people who can write on it and communicate it is quite another.  This is an idea i'd like to see other conventions pursue.

Daishocon is also looking to host panels for "breaking in" to industries are properly represented as well – to make sure people get a good launch pad for their careers.

In central Wisconsin?  Give them a check.  I especially hope more "how to" writers get more attention in the con scene.  I am of course biased – but I admit it!

– Steven Savage

Go Farther: The next (big?) thing

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Hoping to be the next JK Rowling, George Lucas, Gene Roddenberry, Gary Gygax, etc.?

I'm concerned in the wake of Harry Potter, and to a lesser extent Twilight, there's going to be efforts to duplicate the success of the same – with dismal results.  I already see people accused of being derivative of Stephanie Myer when they clearly weren't.  I see a lot of imitators of the above people, and little of the passion.

So what are people waiting for?  What's the next big thing (or small thing that feels big)  What does it need?

Synergy.  Three kinds in fact.

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