* Why is self-promotion so important? (Annalee, Penelope) ** If you don't pitch yourself and your prooduct, no one else will. ** Promotion is at least half your job. * How do you answer the question "So what do you do?" ** Perfect your elevator pitch. (Molly) * How do you market without /marketing/? (Matt) ** do work that doesn't have the explicit goal of promoting yourself, but does as a side effect. (ie, contribute to open source projects; publish work under a CC or GPL license; freely share information on your weblog; volunteer your skills for a good cause/barter work and ask for attribution; positively contribute to an online community - like Metafilter, Flickr, a mailing list, LH; speak at events like SXSW) * Best ways to establish yourself as an authority on a topic? ** Blogging as establishing expertise (Matt, Penelope) * Creating demand: Can playing hard to get professionally pay off? (Penelope, Molly) * When you're a one-person shop, what's better: create a company with a different name or market yourself as an individual? * Personal weblogs that get personal - will they scare off or attract potential clients? * Give them something to remember you by * How much time do you spend on marketing your work versus DOING it?