Blogging | The Networking Nerd

Awesome Name Tag

I’ve never been one for titles. People tell me that I should be an engineer or an architect or a senior this or that. Me? I couldn’t care less about what it says on my business card. I want to be known more for what I do. Even when I was working in a “management” position in college I would mop the floors or clean things left and right. Part of that came from the idea that I would never ask anyone to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself. Plus, it does tend to motivate people when they see their boss scrubbing dishes or wiping things down.

When I started getting deeper into the whole blogging and influencer aspect of my career, it became apparent that some people put stock into titles. Since I am the only employee at The Networking Nerd I can call myself whatever I want. The idea of being the CEO is too pretentious to me. I could just as easily call myself “janitor”. I also wanted to stay away from analyst, Chief Content Creator, or any other monikers that made me sound like I was working the news desk at the Washington Post (now proudly owned by Jeff Bezos).

That was when I hit on a brilliant idea. Something I could do to point out my feelings about how useless titles truly are but at the same time have one of those fancy titles that I could put on a name badge at a conference to garner some attention. That’s when I settled on my new official title here at The Networking Nerd.

I’m Awesome.

No, really. I’ve put it on every conference name tag I’ve signed up for including Dell Enterprise Forum, Cisco Live, and even the upcoming VMworld 2013 conference. I did it partially so that people will scan my badge on the expo floor and say this:

“So, you’re…awesome? At The Networking Nerd?”
“Yes. Yes I am.”

It’s silly when you think about it. But it’s also a very humorous reaction. That’s when they start asking me what I really do. I get to launch into my real speech about empowering influencers and coordinating vendor interactions. Something that might get lost if the badge scanner simply saw engineer or architect and assumed that all I did was work with CLIs or Visio.

Past a certain point in your career you aren’t your title. You are the work you do. It doesn’t matter if you are a desktop technician. What matters is that you can do IT work for thousands of systems using scripts and automation. It doesn’t matter that you are a support engineer. It matters that you can diagnose critical network failures quickly without impacting uptime for any other systems. When you fill out your resume which part is more important? Your title? Or your work experience? Title on a resume is a lot like GPA. People want to see it but it doesn’t matter one bit in the long run. They’d rather know what you can do for them.

Being Awesome is a way for me to buck the trend of meaningless titles. I’ve been involved with people insisted on being called Director of Business Development instead of Sales Manager because the former sounded more important. I’ve seen managers offer a title in lieu of a monetary raise because having a big title made you important. Titles mean nothing. The highest praise in my career came not because I was a senior engineer or a network architect. It came when people knew who I was. I was simply “Tom”. When you are known for what you do it speaks volumes about who you are.

Tom’s Take

Awesome is a state of mind for me. I’m awesome at everything I do at The Networking Nerd because I’m the only person here. I also Suck equally as much for the same reason. When you’re the only employee you can do whatever you want. My next round of Networking Nerd business cards will be fun to make. Stephen and I will decide on a much less pretentious title for my work at Gestalt IT. But for my own personal brand it really is cool to be awesome.

Writing a blog can be very fun and rewarding. I’ve learned a lot from the things I’ve written. I’ve had a blast with some of the more humorous posts that I’ve put up. I’ve even managed to be anointed at the Hater of NAT. After everything though, I’ve learned something very important about writing. For the most part, nobody cares.

Now, before you run to your keyboard and respond that you do indeed care, allow me to expound on that idea just a bit. I’ve written lots of different kinds of posts. I’ve talked about educational stuff, funny lists, and even activist posts trying to get unpopular policies changed. What I’ve found is that I can never count on something being popular. There are days when I sit down in front of my computer and start furiously typing away as if I’m going to change the world with the words that I’m putting out. When I hit the publish button, it’s as if I’m launching those paragraphs into a black hole. I’m faced with a reality that maybe things weren’t as important as I thought.

A prime example is the original intent for my blog. I wanted to write a book about teaching people structured troubleshooting. I figured if I could get a few of those chapters down as blog posts, it would go a long way to helping me get everything sorted out in my mind. Now, almost three years later, the two least read posts on my site are those two troubleshooting posts. There are images on my site that have more hits than those two posts combined. If I were strictly worried about page views, I’d probably have given up by now.

In contrast, some of the most popular posts are the ones I never put a second thought into. How about my most popular article about the differences between HP and Cisco trunking? I just fired that off as a way to keep it straight in my head. Or how about my post about a throwaway line in a Star Trek movie that exploded on Reddit? I never dreamed that those articles would be as big as they have ended up being. I’m continually surprised by the things that end up being popular.

What does this mean for your blogging career? It means that writing is the most important thing you can do. You should invest time in creating good quality content. But don’t get disappointed when people don’t find your post as fascinating as you. Just get right back on your blogging horse and keep turning out the content. Eventually, you’re going to find an unintentional gem that people are going to go wild about.

Despite the old adage, lightning does indeed strike twice. The Empire State Building is hit about 100 times per year. However, you never know when those strikes are going to hit. Unless you are living in Hill Valley, California you can never know exactly when that bolt from the blue is going to come crashing down. In much the same way, you shouldn’t second guess yourself when it comes to posting. Just keep firing them out there until one hits it big. Whether it be from endless retweets or a chance encounter with the front page of a news aggregator you just need to put virtual pen to virtual paper and hope for the best.