Fan To Pro - The Blog of Professional Geekery

Stereotype-Fu: Stereotype Evolved

This is the wrap-up to my original "run" of Stereotype-fu columns.  I'm sure there will be more, but I've covered most of my intended materials. 

I'm going to close with a piece of advice near and dear to my heart: Being Stereotype Evolved.

Self-reference for success

You love your Pomeranain, which is why your gamerhandle lets people know they've been P0wned by CerebusPom23.  Your sig file on your favorite message board references your Twitter account.  Your color scheme for your fansite is a subtle variant on your favorite sports teams, each page lovingly coordinated.

If you're a fan/geek, especially if you're heavily online, you've probably got a lot of self-references.  Handles reflect interests, websites reference other sites, your cosplay costume is based off of your love of Japanese history, etc.

Congrats.  You're practicing one of the skills necessary for career success- self-reference.

Fans And Brands

As anyone may have guessed, I'm a fan of the whole personal branding thing.  I'm no Dan Schawbel (hey, who IS except, well, Dan Schawbel), but I feel it's overall a positive thing -it's about establishing and communicating identity and building a presence. Sometimes it can get overdone (especially when one treats it like PRODUCT branding), but I feel it's a good thing overall - it makes people aware of themselves and how they present themselves.

And if you're a fanboy, fangirl, geek, nerd, etc. guess what, you are probably FAR better at it than you realize, because fandom socializing in the online days has massive elements of personal branding.

So guess what - you're probably pretty good at it.

Book Review: Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success

Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success
by Dan Schwabel
# ISBN-10: 1427798206
# ISBN-13: 978-1427798206

PRO: A snappy, positive, clever book on personal branding that makes it exciting and interesting, explains its importance, and has a lot of good advice.  Helps anyone get going into personal branding in the internet age.

CONS: An erratic writing style.  Depth of information varies erratically.  Its pitch to Gen Y may turn off Gen Xers who would benefit.  Some questionable social conclusions.

SUMMARY: Me 2.0 is an excellent guide to personal branding in the internet age - what it is, how to do it, why to do it, and its impact.  A must-buy for serious professionals.

Stereotype-Fu

I was reading an interesting article on how stereotypes can derail your personal 'brand'. It made some good points, and I responded with some of my own strategies. I'd like to go into my own ideas of dealing with stereotypes.

If you're reading this blog, changes are you're a professional geek/nerd of some kind, or hope to be. Pretty much you've got plenty of stereotypes to deal with professionally and unprofessionally - the lifeless nerd, the socially incompetent geek, the perverse otaku, etc. You've dealt with them for a long time.