Convention Idea: SPECIFIC Career Tracks

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Continuing my series on ways conventions can provide more career-oriented events for attendees, let's take a look at specific career tracks.  You can find earlier posts on the subject here and here.

I've mentioned career tracks earlier, but want to focus on the idea of the specific career track.

Most implementations I've seen of this take several panels/workshops related to a particular career or skill, and ensure they take place in one location at different times.  This allows people to attend all or most of them, since they don't conflict with each other, and are easy to locate since they're in the same location.

This doesn't work for every event, and is probably best targeted for ones specific audience: a voice acting and/or animation track for an anime con, a writing track for a Science Fiction convention, etc.  Only large conventions could have the time, space, and need to do a large amount of tracks.

Targeting career tracks brings in several advantages and possible techniques:
* You reach a specific audience of interest, and maximize attendance while minimizing cost.
* You can "rank" the events/workshops/panels by experience of attendees – thus do the more introductory panels earlier and the more "senior" panels later.  This allows people to attend events fitting their experience level, or attend events in order, learning things from the basics to deeper knowledge.
* You minimize cleanup and equipment for events – you'll at least know what cleanup to expect, and can leave media equipment in the same room.
* You can "re use" guests/panelists and allow them to speak on multiple panels, leveraging their knowledge better.
* This can easily become a yearly event at the convention, constantly improved and tweaked.
* It's a reputation-builder – you show specific career support.

Specific career tracks are something I'd pay attention to convention-wise.  I think for many conventions they're just the prescription to maximize panels that people will want to attend, and build something long-term to educate attendees.

– Steven Savage

News of the Day 7/22/2009

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Career:
How cloud computing will change jobs.

News:
Over 50% of top newspaper publishers join the Fair Syndication COnsortium – I'm still figuring the FSC out. On one hand it seems to involve new revenue streams, sharing, and ads. On the other it seems like it's going to be big on tracking done use of content on sites and asking for cuts. Pay attention, this could turn into a morass of legal actions and bad feelings with no benefits to anyone. On the other hand if FCS works out some good content syndication methods, this could pay off or at least be a worthy experiment – and go beyond news.

Publishing:
Amazon will start doing print on demand of a huge amount of out of copyright books -Interestingly, these are also books digitized by Google. A lot of these are available of course as part of Google's book iniatives, so this seems to be a clear shot at Google in this case, continuing the Text Wars. However the use of further print on demand is intriguing since that technology is a potential Kindle/Reader/Slate/whatever electronic book competitor. Amazon seems to want to have it all ways.

Social Media:
Make-your-own-social-network company Ning raises $15 million in venture capital. Ning's been on my 'watch' list for awhile, and this moves it up – people are willing to sink money into them. However I haven't gotten a good grasp of Ning's strategy and want to watch how it goes before I put it into the 'send a resume' category. I will say Ning as a tool is getting a lot more use as of late and may be worth using either way.

MySpace will be providing email. A strategy I didn't forsee, it could get a lot of users (and help with some rebranding). Check out the news on Yahoo (below), and I think re-inventing email for social media may be a strategy more than one company is trying. It can't hurt, and this could stabilize MySpace a bit (which may help the social media industry overall).

Google Wave will have a sort of Beta, with invites in September – So go see if you can take a look.

Technology:
More on Yahoo: they've bought a social email company, Xoopit, but is working to sell HotJobs and Small Business. Sounds like they're consolidating for social media space.

Estimate on the cost of the Apple Tablet? Above $500 according to TechCrunch. Doesn't sound like much of a competitor in the Netbook space to me, which could mean Apple will rethinking this in a year or so. I see Netbooks as a major growing area, and think anyone in a geeky career should pay attention because they're a) cheap and useful, b) changing how people are using – and buying computers, c) further enhance the use of mobile computing.

Amazon aquires online footwear provider Zappos– I suppose it integrates into their business structure of doing more product. Still, very curious.

Video Games:
Sam Rami to direct Warcraft movie – This is a big thing for several reasons. Rami brings a reliable name and talent to the franchise, a good movie would boost Warcraft's profile even more, and it would also boost the visibility of MMO properties. Also frankly, as game-movie adaptions often aren't good no matter which way the adaption goes, a good one could also raise the attention of game properties.

– Steven Savage

The Future of Publishing

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After reading this article on Michael Stackpoole's ideas about where fiction is going, my usual speculation urges came to the forefront.  I began to wonder what might a viable model be for publishing internet fiction that would go around the big publishers, or at least let one build a reputation and an audience.

Understand of course I am NOT a professional writer (I've been published professionally, which is no where near the same).  This is pure geek theory, so take it as you will, and make sure that grain of salt has friends.

So, here goes – what I see as a viable model for fiction publishing in the future.

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