Fan To Pro: Launched!

Welcome to Fan To Pro.  Let me greet readers by explaining what's going on here.

The short story is that this a spinoff of Seventh Sanctum, a site of creativity-stimulating "generators."  Whereas Seventh Sanctum is about jumpstarting creativity, this is a blog about how people can apply their creative, fannish, and just plain geeky interests to their careers.  As the name says - its about taking fannish things to professional things.

The long story is, as you may guess, longer.

Fan To Pro started as a vague idea about two years ago when my co-author Bonnie and I were discussing some entries in a Seventh Sanctum contest that were incredibly professional, some by people quite young and still determining their careers.  We looked at the people we knew who had taken hobbies, interests, and fandom and made their careers out of them, or enhanced their careers.  We also looked at people we knew whose careers were disatisfying and who longed to use their interests on a job.

Thus Fan To Pro was born, or at least, assembled in a vague order.

The initial idea we had was to do it as a book.  Something friendly, almost chatty, a book that had a sense of someone sitting down with you and having a good career talk.  The book equivalent of a friendly voice when you needed it, combined with some solid advice.  You know - the kind of book you wish you'd had early on in life that'd help you see how the things that were your hobbies, your fanning, your passions would help you in your career.

Initially we tried doing it by interviews with people who had made such transitions successfully, but that only created more questions - was that enough?  What else should we include?  In short, exactly how did we write this book?

The idea kept changing over time.  Initially it would be interviews, then it became about combining the interviews into helpful chapters and lists, then it was about including resource appenecides, etc.  We very much had an idea of what we'd like to do, and we met people enthused about the idea, we just became less and less sure how to get there and what people needed.

We had a great idea - and no idea how to achieve it.

When the book got delayed because both of us decided to change employers (though I can say what we learned doing the research helped), we then re-assessed our plan once our lives were stable again.

What we were doing seemed worthwhile.  A look at other career guides indicated that, though there were many helpful books, there wasn't anything really pitched to the audience we were looking at.  We'd also learned a lot.  We just weren't sure how to turn it into a book or even what should go in there.

And it struck us that a blog was the way to go.

A blog would let us publish findings and research, discuss issues with people, and get folks involved early.  We could post research and information, get guest posts, interviews, post news, and more.  Maybe a book would come of it - or maybe this would be the best format for it.  No matter what happened, it'd be a place to move forward on our goal - helping people turn their geekry into professional opportunities.

So what are we going to do here:
* Post findings, interviews, opinions, research, and guest articles on turning your fanning into a profession or professional advantage.
* Post reviews of books, sites, and resources we've found or will find in our research.
* Post links to useful news, resources, economic analysis, or online job postings.
* Post anything else relevant.

We want to strongly encourage people to comment, dialogue, and even contribute.