Networking is Tougher than Making Friends
Apr 20th
Hey Team,
I’m very excited about the SXSW shenanigans starting today but, but I’m not going to lie, this 
sort of thing isn’t exactly in my wheelhouse. I came here mostly to visit some very good friends that I haven’t seen in awhile and this was a nice excuse, but the bottom line is: SXSW is the year’s biggest interactive conference of the year and, I’m told, the best place to do some serious networking regarding this whole “Greatest Employee in the World” project.
And therein lies the problem. I may know a TON of people working in the Internet industry and more specifically in web video…but that’s only because I’m good at making friends. There is no doubt whatsoever that “networking” is not one of my strong suits.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize how important the networking process is to the job-hunting hoops that we all have to jump through. So in the interest of sharing knowledge with all of my fellow unemployed conferencers (just go with it, if enough of us agree it’s a word then it’s a word) here’s my favorite article about networking at this kind of event (Posted last year on the historically unhelpful About.com nonetheless.)
My favorite tip is number nine:
9. Introduce others. When you meet cool people, be the conduit who connects them with others who might be beneficial to them. This includes others at the conference, as well as other people you might know back home. If you ask the right types of questions, you will easily spot connections that can help others. Don’t ever worry about “what’s in it for me”, but instead just be the person who helps others. You will over time that others will help you too.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Life is a team sport.
On that note…time to go meet so folks.
Don’t forget to have fun out there, Team.
I’m done.
Brett.
SXSW
Apr 20th
Hey Team,
I’m sitting in JetBlue’s waiting area…um…waiting (I guess that part should have been obvious) to hear if there’s room for the loneliest standby passenger on the next flight out to Austin and the wonderful world of SXSW! Here’s hoping…
Regardless, I’ll make it to Austin’s festivities somehow, someway, somewhen so if you’re going to be in town during the next week make sure I know about it so I can say hi! This is my first experience with Social Media’s most venerable of conferences so there’s a lot to check out. Don’t let me miss anything.
Whoop! They’re calling my name! No time for proofing! Gotta go!
Brett.
[Update]
Made it to Austin safe and sound, Team! Hit me up. (My phone number is on the press release page.)
Want to Help Spread the Word?!
Apr 19th
Hey Team,
Want to lend a hand? Thanks to a little help from a friend, you can! We put together this little press release right here to send out to the masses but coincidentally, a surprisingly large number of my press contacts have also felt the icy sting of unemployment recently.
So, here’s how you can help, it takes much too much time to search for outlets that might be interested in covering this new adventure, hunt down their contact information (if it’s even publicly available) and send a personal email their way so, instead…
If you guys have a favorite blog (or blogs) that you think might be interested in the GEitW story, if you have a contact at a local (or not so local…the bigger the better I suppose) tv, radio station or newspaper, or if you happen to have a BFF named Oprah, feel free to send them a quick note and copy and paste the press release into the body of the email. Then leave a comment right here on this very post so everyone can see who’s getting hit up!
Fun, right?!
Honestly, though, I sincerely appreciate the help, team!
I’m done.
Brett.
Lessons From a Girlfriend Application
Apr 18th
Hey Team,
I’ve been doing a lot of interviews about this contest over the last few days and one of the questions that continues to come up is, “What made you think this was a good idea?” (Make sure you read that question with honest curiosity and not with blatant shock at my audacity/stupidity. Please…)
I’ve worked as “a creative” long enough to know that the time honored, “Where do ideas come from?” question never has an easy answer. Ever. All you can do is throw out a quipy (we’re just going to pretend that’s a word for the moment) sound bite and hope that’s enough for whoever to move on to the next question. Usually you end up telling a tiny piece of the truth. The largest piece of the whole pie will satisfy most…but I always feel like I’m letting people down if I don’t share fully.
Obviously I took a lot of cues from last year’s onslaught of employment contests, but that’s just an easy hook to hang ideas on. People get it if you tell them you’re just flipping those contests on their head, but it doesn’t explain where the idea comes from or why.
(I’m realizing this is a very big story. So for today…here’s one more tiny piece.) I was standing in the shower last night going over the day’s interviews (Because, honestly, who doesn’t think better in the shower?!) when my thoughts slid to a special little lady’s upcoming birthday. Which in turn led to the “we’ve come so far” thoughts. Which then morphed into thoughts of how we got started. And although that’s an even more convoluted story with even more pieces of truth, the fact remains, it all started with a contest…an application really.
Going away to college can be a lonely affair and that first spring in the dorms is pretty hard to take as you’re watching couples wander through the quad all day while you can’t even get up the guts to find a way to get the girls you do like to notice you. My solution? The Girlfriend Application.
Printed out, hung on my dorm room door and emailed to a small group of ladies, this was my first official lesson that the only sure fire way to get people to pay attention is to break their expectations. When people know things are supposed to happen one way…that’s when it’s practically your duty to do a 180. (And if you can entertain along the way, even better.)
Bottom line: I can’t call the experience anything other than an overwhelming success. Fast-forward ten years, and I’m standing in the shower looking forward to celebrating my favorite “applicant’s” birthday.
I’ll see if I can get @katymoe to scan and post the application tonight (Yep, it’s still around after almost a decade.), the only question I remember off hand is:
Sex (circle one): F
So, what makes me think GEitW will work? This isn’t how things are supposed to happen.
I’m done.
Brett.
The 5 Sucks of Craigslist
Apr 17th
Hey Team,
There’s no two ways around it. Staring at Craigslist ads all day trying to land a job sucks. Period. It’s not enough that it’s one of the ugliest sites on the entire webbernets either, it comes with a complete collector’s set of hurdles all expressly designed to make that nerve just behind your left eye start throbbing to the beat of heartbreak when all you really want is a paycheck. Here are a few things I tend to run into.
1. It’s Ugly.
We just went over this, but that’s no reason not to reiterate. After staring at pages and pages of blue and purple text sometimes I start crossing and uncrossing my eyes very slowly hoping that a Magic Eye picture of the Empire State Building surrounded by leaping dolphins will appear. (FYI: To date all that has appeared is a very painful headache.)
2. Location, Location, Location.
Craigslist is GREAT for some things. It’s always the first place I go whenever I need to buy something big that I’m happy to get used, but there’s a HUGE difference between Craigslist for San Francisco and Craigslist for Fresno, CA. This picture represents the sum total of open positions in Fresno for the “Art/Media/Design” category this Tuesday. I suppose this gripe is one part, “Why do I keep looking at Craigslist for jobs?” and one part, “Why do I still live in Fresno?”
3. No Pay.
I respect the heck out of internships. I did my time cutting matboard for other people’s projects and sweeping floors six hours a day, you’ve got to work your way into any industry however you can, right? The problem I’m seeing, and I totally don’t blame my BFF Craig for this one, is that lately there have been a lot of very complicated jobs out there listed as “internships.” It used to be that internship was just code for “free manual labor”…now it seems to be code for “I think our profit margins would be higher if we could find a way to do away with our entire labor budget.”
4. Scams.
If it’s necessary for me to click through this page every time I try to click on a category…something’s wrong. Period.
5. The Digital Drawbridge.
I’m not so young that I never got to experience dropping off my résumé at a place of business in a suit and tie. (I was in the suit and tie…not the business. Gotta love misplaced modifiers.) At least then you could chat up whoever happened to be (un)lucky enough to take your cover letter for you…and who knows, maybe you could earn a friend in the right spot by making a great first impression. Now, (and this is my least favorite part about job hunting) you could send a résumé through Craigslist to a hundred different companies and if you don’t have the right keywords in there for their search engines to latch onto then you’ll never even get a chance to hear an irritable secretary tell you that they’ll “keep your information on file” as she hands back your cover letter and you think to yourself, “Hey, waitaminute, you don’t even HAVE my information!”
Clearly these are not completely Craigslist’s fault. These are just some of the flaming hoops of unemployment 21 million Americans had to jump through in our brave new world last year. And yes, they suck. Sorry, gang…but I know we can get through this together.
Did I miss anything? What do you dislike about the job hunt? Head to the comments section and let me know!
I’m done.
Brett.
The Opposite of a Good Story is No Story
Apr 16th
The opposite of a good story is not a bad story. It’s no story. (A bad story is just a good story poorly told.)
And that is the fundamental problem with most corporate blogs.
Hey Team,
I spent a lot of time throughout the last few months trying to decide on the best way to approach this non-traditional employment contest and more importantly, whether or not it was even a good idea…
What finally sent me over the edge was the epiphany I had while perusing a few corporate blogs. Terrible, terrible corporate blogs. The seas of the internet are littered with the detritus of these listing ships. (How’s that for boat talk?)
I blame “social media gurus.”
For the last year and a half these guys (and ladies) have been popping up everywhere, spreading the gospel of company blogs, twitter accounts and facebook fan pages. It’s so easy to sit in front of a computer and read about squeezing every last drop of attention out of social media that I think people have started to lose track of what’s really important. Now everyone is using these tools and instead of creating an impact all most people are doing is adding to the clutter.
All ANY social media site gives you is a stage to shout from in frustration at rows and rows of empty seats. (Albeit a very large stage…with cheap rent. And fancy footlights. And heavy foot traffic out front, so sometimes people wander in just to see what’s going on. And every once in awhile one of those people that wanders in actually clicks with what you’re saying but they know full well that none of their friends would be into it so they don’t tell anyone else and now you’re just shouting at a couple of scattered people who are so embarrassed to admit that they’re interested in what you have to say that they wont even sit anywhere near each other in the theater or even make eye-contact in the lobby. This metaphor has gone too far…) The point is, you can scream about coupon codes and technical jargon until you’re blue in the face but that doesn’t mean anyone is listening. This is where I can help.
Sometimes companies just don’t have anything to say. It’s not always for lack of desire or for lack of stories to tell (There are always stories to tell…I still tell entirely too many tales about working at In-N-Out Burger.), sometimes it’s just about having the time or the ability to look at their own company from the outside. Things that you see everyday and have taken for granted may be incredibly interesting to the rest of the world but without the right perspective it just looks like an average Monday.
So, here I am. Ready to offer up a pre-built story with a pre-built buzz handled by an experienced storyteller, and I can’t wait to see whose stories I will be telling!
What do you think?
I’m done.
Brett.
Too Exciting
Apr 15th
I don’t think I can overstate how excited I am about this project. Amtrekker was a non-stop adventure of immense proportions that spanned almost a year and a half and gave me the opportunity to collect experiences like most people collect, well…paychecks. And at first glance even I’d be forced to admit that it would be pretty tough to top that kind of adventure.
But here’s what REALLY gets me excited: the unknown.
With Amtrekker I had a clearly defined set of goals, an unlimited amount of time and a video camera. In at least one respect I knew exactly what was going to happen. I was going to go hang gliding, I was going to milk a cow on an Amish farm and, somehow, I was going to tell Donald Trump he was fired. Not only that but I was going to get as much of it on tape as possible and I would do my best to make compelling videos despite my “office” often being a crowded seat on a greyhound bus in the middle of the night.
This time things are completely different. There are no boundaries, no limits. I could be landscaping a golf course in Scotland, going back to the design world in LA or cleaning giant rock heads with a toothbrush on Easter Island for all I know. And no matter where I go, or what I do, it will be a new experience in a new place where I can make an impact regardless of whether it’s in a corporate setting or in the great outdoors.
Equally exciting is the idea that I will be in one place for an extended length of time with enough dollars to do better than my best when it comes to making compelling video content. No more calling a project done because my laptop is about to run out of battery and I’m cruising down a forgotten one-lane highway in Montana with no hope of an outlet for another 24 hours. (Unless of course the winner of this little contest happens to be whatever Montana transportation authority is in charge of back roads.)
AND, although there are great stories everywhere and I’ve yet to have a job that wouldn’t have made for an interesting series of short documentary videos, I’ve hedged my bets by letting you guys have a say in which position wins out. The jobs YOU think will be most interesting to get an inside look at will be the ones that make up the final 10!
Too exciting.
So, here’s to the unknown and here goes nothing…
I’m done.
Brett.
Life Lesson #1
Mar 29th
Hey Team,
I have a very simple set of rules that I try to live by that slowly evolved over time as I began to decide what was most important to me in life. For the most part they represent not just what I should be pursuing in life but also the most efficient and effective path of pursuit. For the most part they have names that even a self-respecting motivational speaker (if there is such a thing) would be ashamed of so I’ll just be focusing on the suddenly very relevant Life Lesson #1
Since well before I ever had anything most people would call an “audience” I’ve always toted rule #1 one as:
Know Your Audience
I never meant “Audience” to mean a large group of people watching me because, frankly, even three years ago I never would have expected to be in the position in which Amtrekker put me. Instead, “Know Your Audience” always carried with it the warning that you have to present the right message to the right person. If you want to get things done it’s just silly to talk to people in authority the same way you would talk to people working beneath you.
It turns out, Life Lesson #1 now carries with it an even heavier message as, “audience” really does mean a large group of people paying attention to what I’m doing. And yet, I still feel as though I’ve dropped the ball. In starting Greatest Employee in the World I knew I was walking a tightrope in a juggling act. There was no clear audience because I would be playing to two very distinct audiences. I had to play to companies to elicit offers and to viewers to elicit, well…views.
My thinking was that if I spent my time focusing on press and company interaction then company videos would be offering up de facto fresh content for viewers…but that’s not even me talking to my audience much less knowing them.
This week’s mission is to fix all that with some exciting new stuff! If I’m amazing you’ll notice some big changes by Monday. If I’m just incredible it may be a little bit later next week. Regardless, be on the look out because I like to think I know my audience. 
Thanks, team! I’m done.
Brett.
