On Microcelebrity 9 comments

posted Thursday, August 9, 2007 by topfunky

Most people are curious / and want to get dirt on / the Centaur, I’m famous / I walk around with no shirt on. – Buck 65

Somehow, I’ve managed to make a name for myself over the past few years. It’s a little freaky to casually mention on Twitter that I bought a new office chair, then to see people on an IRC channel on the other side of the world debating the positive and negative aspects of my chair.

I love meeting people at conferences and collaborating on interesting projects. But I get a lot of email and I’m not always able to respond to all of it.

If you’re hoping to write to me or any other microcelebrity, here are some suggestions that improve your chances of getting a response.

Email

General props, compliments, and thumbs up are always appreciated. Every other day I get an email with a thumbs up, which makes my job awesome. It’s one thing to have a boss pat you on the back, and another to get an email from an actual customer or fan who appreciates you. So thank you to all the people who have taken the time to pat me on the back!

For all other email, keep it short and include a specific action item. I received a wonderful email from someone about their history of learning Rails, their plans for the future, and about 6 other long paragraphs. I appreciate that someone took the time to write to me, but a long letter like that takes a while to read and it’s likely that I’ll put it aside and never come back to it.

Social Networks

When friending someone, include a short note about who you are. LinkedIn, Facebook, and other apps give you a spot to add a personal note when you add someone to your network. This puts things in context and helps me figure out if you’re an old college roommate or a friend of my mechanic. For readers of this blog, it could be as simple as the one word “Rubyist.”

This is even more important if your screen name doesn’t match your email address and your real name is even different from the other nickname you go by in the real world. I try to keep these things straight, but sometimes it’s like tracking down a con artist with 17 aliases. (If Jason Crane is reading this, I didn’t mean to call you a con artist!)

And if you are writing a social networking application, give your users a place to do that when they invite friends.

Consulting

I’m currently putting my full effort into PeepCode. If you’re trying to hire me for a long-term project, you’ll get a stock rejection letter, unfortunately.

However, I love to travel and am interested in the occasional on-site training session. I also love to speak at conferences and love it when a conference is organized well enough to pay for my plane ticket to the event.

Books

If you’ve recently published a book and want me to review it here or interview you on the Rails Podcast, I’d love to receive a copy of your book. My mailing address is in the footer of my blog.

Again, I’m putting my effort into my own publishing company right now, but I sometimes take the time to review other books in process. However, I’d much rather be part of the initial process before you even start the book. It’s awkward to send a critical letter of condemnation after reading a book that was poorly researched and badly implemented. I would much rather talk to you for an hour or two before you write your book to get you going on the right track. I’m saying this mostly for authors of anthologies who are going to cover Rails in a single chapter and want to cover only the basics.

Props to O’Reilly for Supporting Developers of All Genders

On a completely unrelated note, I want to give a thumbs up to O’Reilly for listening to the community. On the Rails Podcast, several women decried the lack of gender-specific t-shirts being printed and given out at conferences.

Thanks to unflagging internal advocacy by Rob Orsini, O’Reilly have tentatively announced that they will be printing women’s t-shirts for RailsConf in Berlin. I think this will be the first O’Reilly conference to do this.

Also, it pains me every time I go to the excellent DevChix blog and see that there are only a few hundred subscribers. Carmelyne Thompson, Ana Nelson, Desi McAdam, and others are writing some great articles there and you need to subscribe to their RSS feed if you haven’t already.

9 comments

Leave a response

  • Desi

    Hi, just wanted to say thanks for the shout out for DevChix and for helping us get our voices heard. We really appreciate the support.

    Additionally, I think the advice you have given here is very important. Many people have come into fame almost by accident simply by being passionate about what they do. Since it is by accident many of them did not anticipate being in a situation where they wouldn’t be able to respond and talk to everyone who wants to talk to them. These people all of a sudden find themselves in situations where they feel bad for not having the time to respond. If people do what you mentioned above it would actually make it much easier and feelings wouldn’t be hurt quite so often. Anyway Cheers Desi

  • Beate

    Girlie shirts on railsconf? This are great news, thanks!

  • Chriztian Steinmeier

    Props, compliments and a double(!) thumbs-up to you Geoffrey—you’re a rare character, and I think it’s amazing what you’ve accomplished so far.

  • Greg

    Kudos to you for being able to work on Peepcode full-time Geoffrey! If you’re ever in PA, look me up and I’ll buy you a beer or six.

  • Chris

    Didn’t I see you on the cover of MicroPeople last month? Good post!

  • Matt Aimonetti

    Darn it, I was planning on writing a very long email (about my life) and inviting you to be my friend on all the social network sites.

    On top of that I had this super great new idea for a social network site that I think you should really work on(paid in equities obviously).

    Ohh and I chose you as my new publisher for the book I just finished writing: ‘from Microsoft Excel to Ruby on Rails in 12 hours’ (I wrote it in Kyrgyz but you can easily translate it for me, it’s such a great book).

    I guess I’ll still send the email since I spent few hours writing it ;)

  • carmelyne

    Yah! What he said! Subscribe to the devChix rss… or else! :)

    But seriously, thanks for all the support.

  • Nathan

    I wrote up a similar example with Lohan, Paris, and Britney, but you should probably be added now to acts_as_grosenbach

    

require 'observer'

# one who is observed
class Celebrity
  include Observable

  attr_accessor :name
  attr_reader :is

  def is=(val)
    @is = val
    changed
    notify_observers(self)
  end
end

# one who does the observering
class TrashMag
  attr_accessor :name
  def update(sender)
    puts "#{name}'s Breaking News: OMG! #{sender.name} is #{ sender.is}. KeWl!!!!" 
  end
end

celebs = []

geoff = Celebrity.new
geoff.name = "Geoffrey Grosenbach" 
celebs << geoff

rags = ["Ruby Inside","Signal vs. Noise","Digg"].each do |name|
  mag = TrashMag.new
  mag.name = name
  celebs.each { |celeb| celeb.add_observer (mag) }
end

geoff.is =   "giving a talk at rails conf." 
geoff.is =  "globetrotting to teach rails" 
geoff.is =   "peepcoding"

  • Henry Turner

    Now all you need is the accidental “no knickers, get out of cab” routine. Perhaps on said chair? :)

    Thanks for putting your fullest into peepcode. It’d be nice to see it get a primetime TV spot.

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