becoming a freelancer has taught me many things (some of which do not involve laundry and/or dishes).

the most important one is that you become your brand. every person who has a blog, a homepage, or uses a social networking site, should be thinking about that right now. you may not be famous, or infamous, yet. but someday you might be.

take for my first example, DVD Jon. you know, the kid who cracked the blah blah blah on dvds. he didn’t control his brand. whether he chose it or the media chose it, he will forever be “DVD Jon.” (e.g. the recent engadget article that gave me this idea).

it reminds me of the movie “Hackers.” Johnny Lee Miller’s character (been enjoying Eli Stone, btw^[1]) starts to try to explain his situation, his background, and his experience. he stops, and in a defeated tone, simply utters “i was ZeroCool.” and his peers in the room instantly got it.

Jon Lech Johansen has moved on to writing software that does other things to mp3s, iphones, etc. but you know someday, while trying to tell people about the software he’s written and the coding techniques and whatever else, will probably have to break down and say … “i was DVD Jon.”

[1] sorry ABC, when you have auto-playing embedded video+audio ads that i can’t pause or shush, i don’t link to you directly.

Posted on February 19th, 2008 by mike
Filed under: future, phenomena, web