Create your personal brand

I love channel9.

If you've never heard of it, you should definitely check it out. It’s a site filled with interviews, keynote speeches and demos in video format. It’s one of my favorite learning resources.

I was browsing channel 9 the other day, and came across this keynote. In it, Scott Hanselman talks about social networking, something that I’ve never been really crazy about. Despite my aversion to the topic, the title interested me, so I watched the hour long video clip (and the 25 or 30 minute follow up).

Scott argues that every developer should have a blog and use twitter, I’ll leave the details to the video, but the gist of it is that you should think of it as creating your own personal brand.

I liked the idea of a personal brand so much that I extended the concept to that of a virtual business for my online “persona”, to steal a term from Alan Cooper. By thinking of my online self as a business, I can filter what I am willing to blog about by whether or not it’s good for the business. I know, it’s a bit silly, but it makes me more comfortable with the idea.

Once I changed the way I was thinking about it, I had a philosophical moment where I realized that, not only can I apply this to blogging and my career, but the concept could be applied to virtually all aspects of life. It reminded me of a podcast I listened to a while back about relationships.

I think it could be interesting, as well as, motivating to come up with a mission statement and a set of business rules. At the end of the day though, I think it will make me a better developer and that is what really matters.