Five Minutes of Fame (Literally)

I’ve been recently selected to give a talk at next week’s Ignite Des Moines event. I stumbled across the event via a series of posts on Twitter and my submission on “Nerd Herding” was accepted. Now, to be fair, I first saw that phrase “Nerd Herding” somewhere on Cal Evan’s Blog and thought it would be a timely topic as I’ve been recently in both sets of shoes as the “employer” and then “job seeker” (more on that over the coming weeks). I’ve lived in Des Moines my entire professional life and have learned a lot on what I look for in potential employers. The Des Moines metro has no shortage of boring employers (sad but true). On the flip side I truly believe Des Moines tech market is undervalued in large part because many of the talented geeks don’t know how to market themselves as industry experts.

My first goal for the talk is simple…using entertainment as the analogy, how can employers become agents who “discover” up and coming stars (i.e. alpha geeks). I believe the best jobs are ones that are discovered, not applied for. My second goal and, frankly, what made the event intriguing is how to communicate all that on 20 slides shown for only 15 seconds each. For the mathematically challenged that’s 5 minutes of fame.

In all seriousness I hope to see some of you there. If you aren’t interested in listening to my hot air there will be other great speakers and you will witness the egg catapult contest and announcements of the 2008 Iowa Web Award winners.