Fan To Pro - The Blog of Professional Geekery

Frustration Friday: A Bit of Transformation

As you may have guessed there's some changes going on at Fan To Pro.  After three years we're working to focus and decide on steps to take it farther.

One thing I'm doing is ending "official" Frustration Friday for myself.

It's not that I have a problem with it - it was actually kind of fun - but I figure the therapeutic elements don't need to be "formalized."  Rants should come as they need to.

Also, it will let me focus on delivering what I do best - analysis, news, and career advice.  I'll save my rants for spontaneous ideas and some of my other efforts.

- Steven Savage

Frustraton Friday: I Still Hate Black Friday

Well, it's Black Friday, and as I've mentioned many times before, I hate it.  I don't even need the shootings and peppery spray incidents to hate it, I've got many other reasons.  However these incidents do help crystallize many things I despite about the post-Thanksgiving chaos.

So prepare for another annual "I hate Black Friday" post, but done from my geek and geekonomic point of view.

First as I have noted before, it's a distorter of the economy and plans for the economy.  When so much of your plans revolve around Black Friday, it skews how you plan releases, advertising, and more.  I know people have to go along with it because it's a kind of tradition, but seriously.

Secondly, it puts strains on people keeping up with Black Friday.  How many smaller businesses (or saner businesses) have to deal with the Black Friday mess?  I've had opportunities to set my books up for a Black Friday sale (I didn't as I was busy), but it makes me wonder if I should - or if I have to.

Third, it's a cultural distorter.  Come on people, are we this crazed for new merch?  I mean seriously - last night I and the gang took a drive and saw lines around Best Buy.  Really, is it worth it?

Fourth, it uses mindshare.  How much time is being spent talking about this mess than, say, SOPA?  Yeah, exactly.  Even this very column is in a way  waste of time.  Which is really ironic, but I'm not stopping here, since I'm on a roll.

Fifth, it uses long-term mindshare.  It's a distorter of perspective, and it keeps us from looking at serious economic issues.

So yeah, it's Black Friday, and I'm going to be home watching some ridiculous anime and playing Skyrim.  Happily.

On the plus side, my Champagne Turkey Baste was awesome, let me know if you want the recipe.

- Steven Savage

Frustration Friday: Oh, go and enjoy the metaphors

I got exceedingly goofy this week, with a sincere comparison of job searches and fighting games.

I felt a bit strange, yeah.  We probably all do as geeks.  Do want to admit we got ideas for a marketing campaig from MySims?  That we got inspired in our job search by Gurren Laagan?  No, we don't, we often fear looking geeky.

Well we may need to moderate what we say depending on our audience.  But we should never feel ashamed of it.

It works.

The utter, seeming stupidity of weird geeky inspirations is awesomely powerful.  It's the powerful strangeness that actually helps you get inspired because it it is so unusual.

It works.

It lets you communicate with others.  Your fellow geeks can share the inspiration.

It works.

Don't let anyone else tell you they're dumb, or stupid, or nerdy (well, they are, but not in a bad way).  They work.

So go on, have those weird, odd metaphors.  They work.

(Heck let me know if you want to write some up).

- Steven Savage

Frustration Friday: I Repeat, Economics Is A Religion

So I'm watching the coverage of the entire Occupy Wall Street thing. In most cases, the news does a terrible job:

1. You have what seem to be intentional distortions, which are so blatant as to be pathetic.
2. You have the usual comparisons to the 60's, which is vaslty off.
3. You have general ignorance.
4. You have general cluelessness because people don't seem to want to actually analtze it (and usually fall back to items #2 and #3).
5. Then there are people who just don't cover it.

It's annoying because it seems pretty apparent that this is happening for a reason, is part of larger trends, and seems to be strong in public awareness.

Again, I think this is because economics to many people is religion in the 'revealed" sense - it's about gods and devils, about universal truths that cannot be challenged, and things that must fit into a system of thought.  So something like OWS, which is both about politics AND economics is going to fall into the "religion" trap all too easy.

Which means lousy reporting - and of course for someone like me who tracks economic, political, and geeky issues (and with all the social media involves, this is a geeky issue as well) it's harder to get information.  This frustrates me and makes me write columns.

Frankly?  I think economics should never be considered a hard science - it deludes us into thinking it happens somehow independently of people.  It's a social science - because its about people, and because it acknowledges the messiness of it all.

If people thought of economics as messy, maybe it wouldn't get the revealed religion treatment so much and we could, I dunno, talk about it and report on it better - and people would be less afraid to.

- Steven Savage

Frustration Friday: Hey, Guess What? It's Obvious It's Not Obvious!

I seriously encourage people to share their progeekery.  I want to encourage you, all of you reading this to mentor people and share your career and job search secrets.  I want to encourage all of you NOT reading this to do it, but the mind control module for the site isn't ready yet.

But let me warn you about one thing - what you think is obvious isn't.

Right now, you're assuming someone else knows what you know, thinks like you think, and as smart and experienced (and indeed good-looking) as you are you are incredibly WRONG.

Do not assume anything is obvious when giving advice.  Do not assume people have read that book, used that website, know the way to tweak a resume, etc.  Don't.  If you assume people know something and they don't you will proceed merrily ahead and screw things up.

I'm not saying act like everyone is ignorant.  I'm saying that, when mentoring, remember that people may really not know what you know.  Be willing to explain a bit more, be willing to ask if someone gets something, and stop assuming people have had the same experiences you have.

It's a tough job market.  We have to not be ignorant of other people's ignorance when mentoring.

And you know, not like I've been here or anything . . .

- Steven Savage

Frustration Friday: Connection and Disconnection

We're in a very connected world these days.  I've got anime from Japan, a new interest in Bowties from the UK, friends in Canada, receipies from India, and an mutual fund trying to navigate the Euromarket.  We talk via Facebook and Twitter, Skype and IRC to people all over the planet.

Flash mobs and memes rocket around the world.  Protests spring up out of cyberspace.  Petitions come into being and are rocketed off electronically.

The world is getting more connected.

It just makes the fact that some people are terribly out of touch and disconnected More Freaking Obvious.

I've watched the entire Occupy Wall Street events lately, and the cluelessness of many people reporting on it was astounding.  Look the economy sucks, politics is screwed up, and people are angry - and they're connected and rallying and getting the word out.  But I watched people try and map the protests to old stereotypes or actually ask "hey, what's all this about?"

The connected and the disconnected.

Or you can sit with me and watch Bank of America continue to melt down.  I'm sure when it finally implo-explo-loads it will be greeted as a SHOCK by many people viewing the insides of their own rectums.  On the other hand people like you and I, who stay in touch, have popcorn  . . . and vodka.  Or sake in my case.

The disconnected and the connected.

What's becoming obvious in this more connected world is how out of touch, insulated, ignorant, and deliberately stupid some groups of people are.  There's a lot of contrast when you look at the state of the world.

Dear disconnected people - you look like morons.  Oftentime insensitive and unethical morons (which you may be actually).  The only flaw?

You're not reading this.

Of course, we can all be out of touch, insulated, ignorant, and deliberately stupid.  So perhaps we should try and catch ourselves, but meanwhile it's up to people who are connected - hopefully us - to try and make sure the economy, careers, and the world works.

- Steven Savage

Frustration Friday: The Good, The Bad, and The Searching

Here's something no one told you about the job search these days - your skills at the job search aren't worth what they once were. Things are tougher, tighter, meaner, and stranger than before the recession.

If you're bad at the job search, you are screwed. You might get lucky, hopefully you will, but the odds are against you.

if you're average at the job search, you're in for the long haul. You don't stand out, you don't have an edge, you don't have something special to help you.

If you're good at the job search, you're going to be OK, but it's not always going to be easy.

If you're excellent at the job search, you'll find a job. But it's not going to be like it was.

The terrible job market, the demographic shifts, the changes to HR have brought home one terrible truth that not enough people are talking about - your job search skills matter more than ever.

The frustrating part is thanks to poor training, encouragement, schooling, etc. a lot of people aren't that good at the job search in the first place.

If enough people weren't screwed by high unemployment, an ineffective gridlocked government, and everything else, they're also coping with bad search skills. I doubt the various people who (mis)instructed these folks realized how bad it would be, but there you go.

Worse? There's probably a bit more work out there now than people think, but it's harder to get due to insider approaches, bad HR, and so on. So people who are just average or bad at the job search aren't going to pierce the veil of mystery and B.S. as easily.

So yeah, good and excellent are your hopes for survival. Bad and average mean you're in trouble.

Oh, and no one pointed this out.

(If you're in the wrong industry, or have the wrong skillet, you're even more hosed, unfortunately).

- Steven Savage

Frustration Friday: Thanks For The Wank

I considered writing a post about Steve Jobs at some point.  This would require research on my part, of course - my interest in Mr. Jobs has been specific over the years.  I don't get into the heavy "Cult of Mac" thing or the cult of anything else, really - so I was interested in him for what I could learn.

I'm not sure what I can say about him overall, but I liked Apple products and felt he lent a sense of coherence and aesthetics to technology.  His presence also was oddly defining and comforting at Apple - when he died, I felt the kind of loss you feel with a celebrity.  I rather imagine, being a techno-fanatic, I'll feel the same way about many other Big Names in technology.

Of course theres' Jobs as he died, as he lived, as a person, as a business leader, etc.  No one is simply defined.  It's important for us to understand people such as Jobs because it helps us learn from them, both what to do and what not to do.

The problem of course is that, as I watch reaction to his death, it seems there's far, far too much wank about him and Apple.  I find some of it rather surprising, to be frank.

Worst of all, it's completely the usual stuff - I can't differentiate 95% of it from assorted wank over Gundam versus Star Trek, DC versus Marvel, Tim Gun versus . . .  well, no one is cool as Tim Gunn so we can forget that.  Anyway, too much of the arguing seems to be about staking out territory and endowment-waving, and very little is about issues, who he was, what he did, etc.

I'm all for geekiness, but it's hard to learn professional lessons when it comes down to marking your territory with a heaping stream of invective.

So who knows what I'll write in the weeks to come - if anything, really, plenty of other people are doing better jobs than I.  I just hate the idea that anything sober and educational may require me rooting through snarky comments, wild accusations, and blind fanpersonism.  After a busy September, I'm not sure I'm up for it.

I think this is also a good lesson for professional geeks - it can be easy to go unprofessional pretty quickly.  I'm sure some of the bizarre comments I've read come from perfectly respectable people.

As for now . . . well I'll just confine my unprofessinal ranting to . . . ranting about it.

- Steven Savage

Frustration Friday: Let's Not Become Like The News

Kindle Fire. Apotheker out.  Lots and lots of big stories lately.

Me, I'm going to engage in a pre-emptive rant, and note two things A) There have been a lot of big tech stories, B) I'm hoping this doesn't turn out to be like the O.J. Trial (remember that?  I do, I'm old).

See one of my worries about tech news that with so many big stories, it's going to switch into Single Big Story Mode, whether there IS a Single Big Story or not.

Speaking as a person in his 40's, I remember when news was about a lot of stories.  Then came the entire O.J. Debacle, and the "regular" news got into the business of finding the Single Big Story.  If there wasn't one, they'd find one.  It's one of the contributors to current regular news . . . well kind of sucking really badly.

I'm a bit concerned it could happen to tech news.  We've had moments of Single Big Story, and I'm worried it could become a norm.

I'd really like to avoid that.  I don't think it's likely to happen.  But I have my moments of concern.

- Steven Savage

Frustration Friday: Too Busy To Be Frustrated!

I wanted to go and rant about stuff.  HP?  Maybe Netflix?  maybe DC's relaunch?

But here's the odd thing.  I'm working on Focused Fandom: Cosplay, Costuming, and Career.  And I'm trying to find things to write about, but as soon as something gets me into a good, powerful annoyance I can share - I'm back to examining editing, or publishing, or somthing else.

Seriously, I'm frustrated about not being able to focus my frustration.

This is one of the strange things with a blog - you get into patterns.  This is usual, and it is good, but there are moments your brain doesn't engage.  This is probably even more likely now since most of my focus at this point is my three different series (Scott was a big inspiration).  So I'm used to regular work on things, which isn't as spontaneous as these columns.

And again, the editing - which is very regular.

Most ironically?  I just got a column out of talking about my lack of frustration frustration.

So let's draw some useful lessons - if you're blogging progeeky-wise, then you're going to have those moments of lost inspiration, out of patterns, etc.  It's important to remember, because they will happen.  However the discipline of regular work pays off, even if there are times you're interrupted.

But you might get a post out of it.

- Steven Savage