Vertically Rising

So in my last post, I talked a lot about my personal journey on becoming a Community Manager in the gaming industry. Looking back and wanting to provide something for the community, I wanted to make a posting with some actual practical steps that can be taken from my story.

1. Be Active, if even on a volunteer basis.

I started out by just volunteering my time on a forum. Others I know started by writing reviews on community gaming sites. Being active and staying involved helps to show a passion towards being part of a community and the industry.

2. Get on Twitter/Facebook & Network!

If you’re not using Social Media (Twitter – Facebook – Google+, etc.), you should be. Brands and their respective Community Managers all use these as tools to reach their audience. Most of them also have their own accounts that can be followed. …

Growing up as a kid, we all have had our dream jobs and careers. I used to want to be a Paleontologist and discover some new dinosaur. At one point I wanted to be involved in the comic book industry, but my art was terrible, so I thought maybe I could ink (and in the words of Kevin Smith’s “Chasing Amy” film, it’s just tracing!).

I’ve spoke about how I started playing video games at a young age with the Nintendo Entertainment System, and while I never quite had a moment in life where I knew I wanted to work in the gaming industry like Cliff Bleszinski, I just didn’t think there was an actually opportunity to walk down that path.

in 2008, I had been part of a group of gamers from my church who played Halo 3 and Gears of War almost nightly. One of them had recently …

For those not familiar, PAX stands for Penny Arcade Expo, a convention of sort for gamers that was started by the website/web comic Penny Arcade. Starting in 2004, it’s grown every year, and even added a PAX East hosted in Boston in the Spring of 2010.

For me, this’ll be my first PAX. I’ll be hanging probably with the ASTRO Gaming crew and a bunch of the Destructoid guys (BTW: As a plug for Destructoid, if you’ve haven’t visited their site yet, you should. They do a great job of bringing in people into a gaming community close to you with NARPS (No Apparent Reason Parties). Going to one this weekend. ). Being that I haven’t been to a PAX before, I’ll probably be like a kid in a candy store, only this “store” has tons of great free play stations with the games that are coming …

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