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| Art by Roxana Suchorolski © 2010 |
I am a geek: someone with extreme skills, knowledge, and
passion for what I do. I happen to think that everyone is a geek, anyone that becomes interested in something where work becomes play. For most of my life,
I’ve been fascinated with how living things affect other living things and for the past eight years I developed distinct
skills and knowledge to look for differences in cancer cells and normal cells, and
helped to develop new devices to measure them; Before that, I worked with
computer scientists and bioinformaticians for four years on the human genome
project; And before that, I worked with another cancer biology lab on a cancer-fighting
virus. (For those of you keeping track,
my career has outlasted Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Farscape, and Star Trek Voyager and Enterprise,
before they were all cancelled.) While
becoming a geek in biomedical science, I learned to communicate with analytical
types: other researchers, engineers, and computer scientists.
At the same time, communications in other parts of my life
with my non-work community atrophied. The
symptoms of this were few friends outside of work, few community ties, poor
family bonds, and a marriage that eventually dissolved, leading to a major
breakdown and re-evaluation of my life. Determined
to learn from my mistakes, I assessed my life and for the past three years worked
to create a new future. I’m still
working at it daily and am finding a recipe, for at least one Seattle geek, to
network effectively across all communities: By becoming a networking geek.
“The life of a
samurai was filled with death. To find balance, they practiced art, poetry, and
meditation.” @rumi2shams
Networking outside of our field often seems impossible to many
geeks, due to fear of judgement when talking to others, or a lack of confidence
in our skills. Sometimes there is also
the lack of awareness of the benefits for fostering relationships with skilled
people outside of our field of interest and it’s not until we are put in touch
with a social connectors and salesmen (Malcolm Gladwell, 2000, The TippingPoint) that our
ideas are spread. Often, traditional tribes
associated with geek-dom have resisted communicating with other human beings in
the arts, design, communications, sales, sports, spirituality, among others. These other fields have also fostered
attention to detail but through exclusion, we lose the practice to communicate with
them. The resulting myopic view can make
us lose sight of how our work can make real-world differences for humanity, a
key to inspire others to champion our cause.
“When choosing your
dream job, use all of your skills.” –Junichiro Kimura, Japanese and English teacher,
kick-boxing instructor, and friend
Although the economy seems in recovery at the moment, there
is the harsh reality that even as our economy grows, many jobs are being
outsourced while others are becoming obsolete.
In the technology and biomedical world there is continuous competition
from larger intellectual hubs that deprive smaller groups from fostering a
critical mass. This large scale
competition can cause a decrease in diversity of ideas (eg. the continuous
acquisitions of Seattle Biotechs by larger financial hubs). Also, the emerging work force from Asia is becoming
competitive to American jobs as it becomes more specialized.
Generating new ideas through collaborations is an excellent
way to innovate and form new jobs; however, most geeks typically don’t practice
skills to establish rapport with collaborators and build relationships over
time. This can lead to geeks feeling resigned
in their jobs because of the fear of searching out new jobs or collaborating to
create new ones. In the current job
market, unemployed geeks sometimes lack the networking skills critical to find
positions and unable to recognize how their skills can translate into professions
where jobs are more abundant. Since few
geeks maximize their skill-sets in connecting with and promoting their ideas to
others, we have a highly trained workforce that has yet to achieve its
potential.
Target of the
Geek-seeking Missile Blog
The mission of this weekly blog is to enable readers to acquire
skills to become more connected and expressive. This
blog will allow fellow readers to change their perspective on networking and, through
regular practice, become experienced at connecting with others to share skills and
create new lasting relationships.
I know it’s possible, because I have recently been there: I
have been job seeking for the past year, have experienced fear of judgement,
fears of success, poor listening, and awkward social habits. I have learned to control my own inner
emotions and actions that were imprinted in my way of being and were at the
source of my failures. I had to overcome
habits such as over-analyzing situations and seeing the world from social
conditioning that each of us is inevitably exposed to. As a result, some of my writing will question
commonly-held limiting beliefs that need to be EXPLODED in order to bring your
ideas to the world.
The connections that we make
in our life are critical for a healthy and fulfilling existence. The past three years of my life, since my
divorce, have been devoted to identifying and solving problems related to
relationships and connecting with others on emotional, intellectual, and
financial levels. In the final years of
my PhD, I devoted a significant amount of time to networking in all sorts of
venues: at art galleries, at work, networking nights, free beer nights, science
café nights, product shows, coffee shops, restaurants, lounges, bars, dance
clubs, at parties, at singles-events, on the street, on my jogs, and on
Seattle’s transit system. If anyone
knows of the Seattle Freeze, I’ve
been there, done that, and have consistently broken through the ice. I derive my teachings from a large number of
sources: being coached by masters of relationships, personal reading and videos,
and most of all consistent regular everyday practice. When I can, I will share my sources, and I also
look forward to YOUR feedback, and the opportunity to learn from you!
Geeks have truly influenced the world we live in for the
better: cures to life-threatening diseases, technological marvels, and people connecting
with each other at unprecedented levels, making the world a vibrant and fun
place to live. It’s our continuing responsibility
to enrich our communities and our planet by connecting with each other.
As the networking skills of our community grows, I look forward to
interacting with each of the geek-seeking missiles that arise from the awesome talent
here in Seattle and wherever you live.
Yours truly,
-Martin
