Fan To Pro - The Blog of Professional Geekery

The Value of A High School Diploma

It's also valuable to the country at large.  High School graduates earn more and depend on services lest, making the investment by society a net gain.  Some nice and interesting math here.

- Steven Savage

Promoting Professional Geekery #23: Start A Pro Section At A Con

The roundup of Promoting Professional Geekery is here.

OK you're speaking at a con about careers.  You might be managing an entire track of career events.  So what more can you do to encourage people attending your convention or conventions to try the route of the professional geek?

Why, by inviting other professionals - but not just to speak.  Give them tables, give them their own area.  Start a Pro Section at your con.

Geek to Geek: Promotional Tools

What's the main thing you do or create and what's the best tool you use to promote it?

Jason: The main thing I do is to manage and write for my website, Comics Bulletin. The main things I do to promote the site involve social networking. The site is deeply invested in social networking, with an active Twitter feed, good Facebook community, frequent posts to Reddit, active inline commenting on our articles, etc. We really do see a bandwagon effect from the social networking work we've done, as more and more users visit the site, engage in content, and then return to the site to stay engaged. We've found that the most important thing for a site like ours is that we make it clear that we want two-way communications. And that works.

Scott: Main thing?  Um...
A lot of writing that hasn't really seen the light of day except for friends.  The only thing that has been released to the general public is the "Lost in Translation" series, which I've placed into a .sig on a forum I frequent and let people know exists on Facebook and Google+. Self-promotion, I lack it.

Ellen: The main thing I create is writing: Flash fiction or literary blog posts in occasional bursts, and a long-term project of a novel. The best tool for this, I suppose, is people. Not that I "use" them necessarily, but through the people I encounter I dream up knew characters, consider other perspectives, and think about what needs to be addressed, on big and small scales. Without people, there would be no humanity to capture, no readers, and no one to help. I work mostly with and through them.

Ewen: The main thing I make that people actually pay attention to is tabletop role-playing game stuff. If I want to draw attention to something I made I usually post about it on my blog (http://yarukizero.wordpress.com/), on Twitter, on the Story Games forum (there are lots of tabletop RPG forums, but SG tends to be one of the most receptive to the kinds of things I make), and more recently on Google+. It would be hard to pick any one as the best, but in terms of getting eyeballs on my blog as recorded by my usage stats, it's actually my RPG.net forum signature followed by Twitter and then Story Games. I don't actively try to promote stuff on RPG.net--the setup of the forum doesn't lend itself to that--but posting there does have an effect. My blog is probably the lynchpin of the whole thing, since it's where I have the actual content, including stuff like information about Japanese RPGs that's hard to find elsewhere.

Lauren: The main thing I do is write things on the Internet. But whether I'm writing about Web culture for the Daily Dot or anime fandom for my personal blog Otaku Journalist, just about everything gets a shout out on Twitter. It took three years, but my Twitter following is currently over a thousand. It's the best space for me to reach a lot of readers at once. 

Of course, that doesn't mean I can just slap links up there haphazardly. I have to present them in a way I know my followers will find interesting, and in a volume that won't make them click unfollow. Needless to say, I post a lot of geeky, techy links and tend to leave the other topics out.

Serdar: My main thing is my writing, and I'm currently using my blog --
GenjiPress.com -- to do most of that promotion, with Facebook and Twitter to
drive traffic to it. That said:

- The blog is built on a publishing system that I've grown disenchanted
with, and at some point I'm going to migrate it to something more robust and
create a better design to go with it.
- The blog doesn't really do a very good job of promoting my work, and a big
part of that is the design I'm using. Whatever redesign I come up with is
going to revolve strongly around promoting my work, with that
front-and-center instead of a sidebar or a secondary consideration. I'm
trying to make the best of the current design as an interim measure.
- The writing itself is available only through Lulu.com, which I'm also in
the process of migrating away from. It's taking a lot longer than I would
have liked, though, but I want to get everything migrated out of that and
into CreateSpace by the end of this year.

Steve: For me it's my books and my websites, and they actually cross-promote each other.  On top of that I do a newsletter that's a more personal and lesson-focused publication and a video blog.

 

No Sale For Amazon At B&N

Barnes & Noble Won't Sell Books From Amazon Publishing - NYTimes.com

Not surprising at all, really. Why aid and abet the competition, especially when they're now competing quite directly?

Then again, Amazon did much the same thing when they refused to stock titles from print-on-demand mavens Lulu.com. (One could still order them through Amazon from third parties, but it was a blow to Lulu nevertheless.) In the same way, Amazon-published titles will be available through B&N's website, but not all of them will be listed.

-- Serdar Yegulalp

A uniquely geeky job opportunity

Hey everyone, a recruiter I knew is looking to fill a perfect position for a professional geek: A developer evangelist!

This position involves doing a lot of development, trying out different tools, and then writing and blogging about their work. If that sounds like you, go to http://captainrecruiter.com/jobs/242 and apply. Mention "Michael."

- Steven Savage

News from the North - Jan 31

New Nook Coming Out
Barnes & Noble is set to release a new version of the Nook this spring. The New York Times suspects that if the Nook doesn't do well, the traditional book will fall by the wayside as ebooks dominate. If the new Nook does succeed in the marketplace, B&N can maintain physical stores.

Kinect on Laptops?
A leak at Microsoft is implying that the X-Box Kinect could be used on a laptop running Windows 8. Microsoft has already announced that the Kinect could be available February 1st for desktops. Given that the computing market is diversifying ("Post-PC world"), Kinects on laptops is a natural progression.

Corporate Rivals Teaming Up to Fight Spam
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL, and Facebook are working together, targeting spam and phishing. The tech companies are working with PayPal and the Bank of America to fight the scourge of the Internet. So, which one gets to be Heart?

Facebook IPO
Steve has mentioned this, and I've pointed out relateed news stories in the past month, but it looks like Facebook's IPO could come next week. The initial value could be $100 billion. Goldman-Sachs could be significant in the IPO. I just wish I wasn't using "could" - the IPO seems very probable, but no word is coming from Facebook.

Update!  People are expecting the IPO to have a twist as Zuckerberg does something that doesn't follow traditional wisdom.  The fallout is going to have repercussions.

Cellphones and Smartphones Aid Shopping
Over 50% of cellphone owners use them to help with shopping. Shoppers use their phones to look for the highest quality item and to compare prices. Retailers will need an online presence, even if they don't process online sales, at this rate.

--Scott D

SOPA and PIPA may be fading - ACTA is up

I could go on about this, but all the information you need is here.  It's a trade agreement that really backdoors a good deal of SOPA/PIPA like nonsense - and some in the EU are signing off on it (though it has not passed).

So rally the wagons again, we've got another fight on our hands.

- Steven Savage

Facebook Preparing IPO. Maybe

Get the maybe-latest here.  There's speculation on timetables which really says very little.

I still want to keep this in people's minds because how the IPO goes is going to effect other IPOs, market valuations, VC investments and more.  This may not be a good effect, but it will be a effect.

- Steven Savage

How Much Is That Anime Title License In The Window?

ADV Court Documents Reveal Amounts Paid for 29 Anime Titles - News - Anime News Network

Turns out ADV filed suit against one of its licensors, ARM, in 2008. What's at least as interesting as the suit itself (which is ostensibly not related to the current suit against ADV courtesy of FUNimation) is the amounts of money paid out to license particular titles.

Most of the licensing costs for anime are not discussed publicly, for a variety of reasons -- not the least of which being, why give someone else a ballpark figure for a counterbid for a property in the same general territory? But the figures reveal that licensing anime is not a one-pricetag-fits-all deal. Some were in the low five figures; some in the high six verging on seven.

Highly educational for those who are contemplating that Kickstarter-funded, crowdsourced anime acquisition project.

-- Serdar Yegulalp

Layoffs At THQ

THQ is making cuts. Where it is is a bit of a question, and this roundup tries for some context. It might be several layoffs.

Analysts seem positive about THQ's moves.

TAKEAWAYS:

• THQ is going to survive, I think it'd be unlikely for them to collapse - but clearly they need to restructure/reorg/replan.
• I'd be careful of any job oppose with them for this reason.
• Their age-refocusing might leave some opportunities for other companies and studios.

- Steven Savage