Fan To Pro - The Blog of Professional Geekery

In Praise of Older Geeks

“Know your roots.”
-a T-shirt featuring a NES controller.

Geekery is often presumed to belong to the young.  However, this is probably due to the stereotype that the average comic book reader is a ten-year-old boy.  Even high tech gadgets, thought to be the domain of those raised on a steady diet of Internet and cell phone use, aren’t really procured by kids unless their parents spring for it.  It’s a misconception that just because our technology is hip and new that the strongest example of geeks are fresh on the scene as well.

Mentor Chains

A great thing about being a fan, a gaming geek, a pro-geek, etc. is that we can find all sorts of role models - from famous programmers to great artists and the like, there are people whom we can model ourselves after and learn from.

Let me make another suggestion for using your friends and fandom to improve: what I call Mentor chains.