This past weekend, I was one of the 26,000-plus people who passed through the Baltimore Convention Center for Otakon. Things were surprisingly orderly for a crowd that size, which is a definite credit to the organizers.

I couldn't help but wonder what kind of job skills could be gained from working a crowd that size (and the staff was pleasant overall, I didn't hear any reports of them being rude to congoers).

I came up with the following list:

1. Management. Running a supersized con requires the organizational skills of a major company executive. Any con will give you this kind of experience, true, but one this size really prepares you for the corporate world.

2. Theater tech. Staging the events, the masquerade, the various panels, the rave, etc. requires technical stagecraft skills (the rave, for example, looked like a high-end club, with light shows projected on the walls).

3. Customer relations. Working registration and processing a huge amount of people like this is a lesson in diplomacy and keeping your cool. When I finally got to registration on Friday morning (my group just missed the line cutoff Thursday night), the people who helped me out were still pleasant, despite the fact that they'd pushed through 10,000 people the night before and were looking at another 8,000 that day.

4. Marketing. There were some novel approaches for people in the dealer's room and Artist's Alley to draw customers to their tables, including "buy something, get a button free" specials, handouts, etc. And a LOT of business cards were being passed around (some including Twitter handles and Facebook pages).

5. Fashion photography. The cosplay photo suite was doing brisk business, and the photographers working it were wracking up an impressive portfolio in the process.

6. Law enforcement. Con security kept things peaceful and people moving through the halls at an orderly pace, despite the OMG HUGE crowd.

You might notice that some of these aren't necessarily the firt thing you'd think of when it comes to fan-to-pro careers. Geek jobs come in all shapes and sizes, and you may gain skills from working huge cons you wouldn't have thought of developing before. Going fan to pro, after all, is all about thinking out of the box – and working a big con is a very good method of box removal.

- Bonnie