Welcome Angela Melick to WWdN! She’s sharing this special guest post with us while Wil Wheaton is at sea. Find more of her work at Wasted Talent and follow her on Twitter. She’s the genuine (Canadian) best.
When I was sixteen, I’d spend weekends with my dad at the driving range. Unlike most fathers, mine didn’t particularly enjoy golf. But, he was a career man, and he thought that lowering his score would make the many business-related golf outings he was made to attend run much smoother. Since I aspired to the same profession (engineering), I went along, and dad hoped that this head start would afford me an advantage he had lacked.
I’ve been in the field for almost a decade now, and I’ve never once been asked to a golf game in a business context. It seems to me like things are changing in business, especially in the world of High Tech. Sports was once a critical way to bond with a stranger. You could chat with anyone about last night’s game, and some of the biggest business deals were brokered on the putting green. These days, most of my coworkers will wave away discussions of the Local Sports Team with a disinterested shrug. High Tech is the realm of geeks, and while there are lots of geeks who love football and golf, such an interest can no longer be assumed.
What’s interesting to me is what’s replacing it, and I think that the new social bond between strangers could become geek culture. Sports metaphors still litter business discussions, but lately I’m just as likely to hear a Star Trek metaphor. The most heated debates in the office centre around the relative merits of different Sci-Fi franchises, or the latest superhero films. We bond over the many hours lost in Azeroth. We’ve had office LAN parties and onesie anime nights. I’ve successfully used the word “tsundere” in a business context. (Although, I once joked to a client that we could implement self-destruct into their product as a security feature and that fell flat – exercise your geekdom with caution.)
Okay, so I work for an unusual company. I would consider us on the fringe In a lot of ways, but I can also see this as a sign of things to come.
I was surprised to hear this year at CES that the CEO of Intel had hired a League of Legends coach. When I thought more about it, I realized how often I never get to meet my colleagues or clients in real life. Many of my projects are coordinated remotely, and my team is spread all over the world. There is no “local” sport my whole team can share. But there’s only one League.
Geekdom is attractive because of its accessibility. Anyone can be a gamer, anywhere on planet earth. Local terrain and climate are irrelevant. You don’t need to be tall, strong or a fast runner. You can start a match with your teammates instantly, globally. We work with our wits, so should we bond with them. Will I be brokering my future business deals in some auction house of some future MMO? I couldn’t say, and I can’t imagine it will be for awhile. But I do know I’d rather live in a world where my geek cred will do more for my business prospects than my golf swing.
And anyway, I still suck at golf.
Discover more from WIL WHEATON dot NET
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
What could possibly be more exciting than golf ?
Televised chess.
I was thinking maybe competitive napping. After all, it’s golf. At least watching great chess offers the chance to learn something.
If you know how to play chess, televised chess can be pretty awesome.
So, what would you require for a meeting room in a MMO? Serious question – I’m making one, I might as well make it business-friendly. I’m trying to match old City of Heroes’ design specs for customization, so company logos in tile is no problem. We’re not going to integrate TeamSpeak into the game – but we might try to make it so our client can control their client. Solid logging features, of course. URLs are tricky. Allowing them into our chat would violate our anti-spammer/phisher strategy. Same for mailing attachments using the system mail.
I’ve never actually commented on Wil’s blog before, and it feels weird to be doing so here. But with regards to your question, you might want to look into the online venue called Second Life, if you haven’t already. It’s called a game, but all its content is user supplied, and it is, effectively, a 3-D chatroom. One of their business models was to get companies to use it for long-distance-anything, and it has failed spectacularly.
Geek culture is very important to alot of people integral to various tech systems.
Angela, I agree with everything though I do have one thing that bothers me. When people say “it’s technical” and I say I’m smart; I can usually figure it out. I wish more techies (and I work in IT) were able to get outside of their techie threshold via verbage that is common. We agree that golf is not common (or interesting) but “I manage a team of software developers who make the newest tools for our industry” is imminently approachable. I wish I did that, that sounds cool.
I don’t intend this to be shooting the messenger. I do get the extra happy kick in the company of geeks. When someone else does not speak our language, I think it’s important to be inclusive.
Alright, I am straight up not fawking around here.
If anyone wants to pay me $96,000/year, I will relocate to ANY LOCATION ON EARTH to full time coach at Satan’s Hollow, Bosconian, and/or Tutankham. I am tough, but fair.
Find me here.
Spudnuts, you wouldn’t want to relocate to silicon valley for $96k.
I was gonna put some of that money into an elegant treehouse and live in the backyard of my client. That, or just sleep in their driveway in my new Tesla.
‘Unlike most fathers’
I don’t get this. My father never played golf, nor did any of the fathers of any of my friends. Maybe this is a regional thing? I always thought golf was just another sport on TV, like all the rest of them, that Midwesterners cared about.