Speaking of community-building

There a Game Media and Fansites group on Linkedin, started by (pardon any inaccuracy) Jon Radoff of GamerDNA — I came to it through one of Sam Houston’s tweets a week or two ago. In Jon’s own words:

I thought I’d explain why I formed this group. Games in general (video games, digital games, MMOs, etc.) comprise a very large number of website on the net. But I’ve never really seen a community that’s geared towards the owners of these sites. I’m not looking to create a new place for learning about game news (you have ample resources for this), so you won’t see many people from the industry-side here… 

Instead, I thought there was a need for connecting and networking amongst site owners (to help catalyze more business opportunities), and exploring the professional issues and challenges around building traffic, syndication, SEO, link-building, monetization, ad networks, etc. 

Now, I’m not actually much of one for active networking unless it bites me on the ass or happens when I’m not looking — I always know I should, but I rarely remember to do it; and when I do do it, it’s usually by accident or what I’d call “being normal and friendly.” I’m not really about making money off this site either, but the plain fact is, I’m not about NOT making money either, and it’s wise to keep broadening one’s horizons.

I’d been hearing about LinkedIn for a while now and hadn’t yet gone to take a look, and I figured this would be a good opportunity. So if you think “Eh, this isn’t me, I’m not big/visible/important enough,” I’d say if I am, you certainly are. We blog. We can change the universe. We can save the cheerleader (though if it were up to me I’d have let the byatch die and the series would have been put to a merciful death only shortly after it jumped its 6th episode shark… but I promised I wouldn’t rant about Heroes. I hope none of you know where I live).

Among other things, I’ve found a few of my old UK friends on there — whaddaya know? Well, we all work, and we all use computers, so I guess it wasn’t really rocket science. I must be getting bloody old, because 10-15 years ago I’d have been all over LinkedIn like white on rice, and now I’m all “Meh, do I really need to be found? There might be people I don’t like there!” Answer to which is, so what? There’s also a bunch of people I might be able to reconnect with, which is pretty cool.

Oh wait, topic, staying on. Yes. If you blog and this seems even remotely interesting, especially if you haven’t experienced LinkedIn yet, go take a look: clicky the linkies. It’s not hard to get started, and it can’t hurt to be connected to more armchair developers (well, and there’s a few real ones in the group too *cough* Koster *cough*).

Since that place uses *gasp* real names, this is me.