

Ask HN: How do you promote yourself? - nirav

I know that maintaining a developer blog and speaking in conferences buy you a lot of recognition. Is there an alternative way to gain that lime light?<p>Not many people are fond of speaking or are simply not designed to speak effectively, is there a hope for them (myself included)?<p>I had this really random idea to teach a small batch of people something new; once in a while, but I'm not really sure that it will help as much. What are your thoughts and experiences?
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nostrademons
1\. Do cool things.

2\. Tell people about them.

There's a pretty big industry surrounding how to promote yourself effectively,
but ultimately, most of those things are secondary concerns. You shouldn't
_ignore_ marketing advice - there's often useful insights on what appears
impressive to other people - but you'll always get more bang for the buck by
actually doing things that _are_ impressive to people rather than trying to
make what you're doing _appear_ impressive to others. Actions speak louder
than words.

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nirav
It turns out rather hopeless appealing people with skills you don't have.

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nostrademons
So get skills? That seems much more productive than convincing people that you
have skills that you don't.

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nirav
Doesn't that usually involve giving up your passion? Not every skill is worth
getting, don't get me wrong though - I am apprehensive at doing things just to
please some people.

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nostrademons
Well, it definitely helps to be passionate about something that other people
are impressed by, but unless you're into incredibly obscure areas of academia
or work in a bubble, there's probably _somebody_ out there that will be
impressed by a job done well.

What are you passionate about?

~~~
nirav
Programming is my passion, you are probably right about the bubble.

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theprodigy
In your case I would try and participate in a lot of online communities, then
have a link to your twitter and blog for all posts. Make sure you provide
quality content for your blog and twitter.Some times when you make a good
comment on a post people will check you out if you have a link for them to
follow.

That should help out a bit.

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ssclafani
Since you are comfortable interacting with a small batch of people, attending
barcamps/unconferences is a good way to network and promote yourself. If you
live in an area with a startup scene there are probably multiple such events a
week.

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jolan
Write / join an open source project.

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nirav
Sure, I own few open source projects github.com/niravthaker

I also contribute to Eclipse and other related projects but that seems too
time consuming.

