Who Are You Online?
My first website was a digital junkyard of text, links, and a little animated mailbox that opened and closed for my email (so awesome). This was back in 1999, when I was starting to draw a comic strip in college. It seemed like a good idea to have a place to archive all the old comics, so I dumped everything into a free webhost. It wasn't much, but it was my first stake in having an online presence.
An online presence is not just one website, but rather a complicated web of elements that help define who you are to the rest of the world. It's your blog, your online photo album, the comment you left on that cooking website about the brie fondue, the home video on YouTube, your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, the emails and instant messages you send, and everything that might be out of your control but somehow links back to you.
So there are two approaches to this. One, of course, is to be totally freaked out and go hide in an underground bunker. The second, and hopefully more reasonable alternative, is to take an active role in crafting an online presence. With every strand of the web that you can leave your mark on, more and more opportunities will naturally present themselves.
Now I can only speak from my own limited experiences, but let's start with the area of careers. What would have happened if I had never made that animated mailbox open and close so awkwardly back in 99? What if I had just stayed away from the web entirely and decided to pursue stuff on my own? If that had been the case, when finishing up grad school, my network would have probably looked like this:
One central hub: my portfolio, most likely a hefty printed book of projects that I could lug around between prospective employers' offices, and my resume, a piece of paper showing if I'm experienced and qualified for the job. Neither of these are bad; in fact, we're lucky in the creative industry to have a portfolio in addition to the standard resume. But even so, this network is limited. I tend to think of it like this:
Red is whatever you throw out there to the rest of the world to represent yourself, blue is a potential opportunity, and the dotted line is the connection that tethers them together. The same model could be applied to a lot of stuff...like friendship, for example. You're in the middle, your friends are all connected around you, and the opportunities to connect with them are represented as parties, dinners, phone calls, and so on (subconsciously, of course...that would be one ridiculous flow chart).
All right, so I tried to map out what really happened. This was the result (sorry it's not all designer-ish and organized):
(click for bigger version)
That right there is absolutely insane. The Okaydave portfolio was the central hub, but it was also connected to a personal site, videos, Flickr photos, and even that first comic strip from almost 10 years ago. But what's really insane is how many things were out of my control, and how many things connected. I got my current job because someone randomly found Okaydave through the social search tool StumbleUpon. That opportunity couldn't have possibly existed outside of the interactive world.
Whether I like it or not, that image is who I am online. I've tried to control several central touch points: the portfolio, blog, videos, photos, profile pages, and so on. Still, most of that stuff just happened organically. While there are definitely negative aspects to that too - you should see some of the comments I delete from YouTube - the unavoidable (usually anonymous) negative comment is a speck of dust in an overall online presence.
You can probably imagine what your own online presence would look like mapped out this way, and the areas where you do and don't have control. Your presence definitely doesn't need to be a portfolio, blog, or anything that requires any sort of web design knowledge - there are thousands of tools and sites out there to easily express and define yourself online. But whatever those places are, think about how they represent you. Think about if you can expand that presence without compromising the image you want to project, because the opportunities for all these random dots to connect are definitely out there. And you never know who's going to stumble upon you.
Friday, March 7 at 8:48 AM
Okay Samurai Multimedia is Dave Werner's personal site. I'm currently working at Minor Studios in San Francisco. Thanks for visiting! (more...)
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