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glass_icarus, "most unexpectedly translatable skill/s you developed in fandom"
This isn't really an unexpectedly translatable skill, since I figured HTML and web page skills were going to be useful even back in the internet's infancy, but I am still surprised by just how much I have ended up using those skills. I learned super simple HTML in a high school class, but I really used it to develop various terrible fansites on Geocities. I learned how to touch type by typing up a catalog of SFF books various people in my school owned—not that many of us were SFF fans, and I had a dream of cataloging everything and putting up people's emails so you could just email someone to ask to borrow a book. (This is also how I learned that Tor ISBNs started with 0812 and Del Rey with 0345, or at least they did pre-ISBN-13.) Mostly I worked on my Gundam Wing fansite with my high school friend and ranted about web usability... in those days, site with a giant graphic, teeny weeny font, and creatively titled sections like "storm in feathers" or something for "guestbook." (Also, guestbooks. We had them, heh.)
I very much did not expect to get a job in web production, much less stay there, much less go into web usability as well. Not only that, but nearly all my tech skills were learned via fandom: women talking about vid codecs and building their own computers and coding fic challenge matching algorithms and rooting ereaders and changing journal layouts and posting how-tos and 101 guides made it so much more accessible. And a lot of those skills are ones I use in my job a lot (it's amazing how people think you are really proficient with tech when you know how to Google an error message and figure out what it means). I mean, I still hit up against Impostor Syndrome all the freaking time, but I probably wouldn't be in this field at all if it weren't for fandom.
glass_icarus, "most unexpectedly translatable skill/s you developed in fandom"This isn't really an unexpectedly translatable skill, since I figured HTML and web page skills were going to be useful even back in the internet's infancy, but I am still surprised by just how much I have ended up using those skills. I learned super simple HTML in a high school class, but I really used it to develop various terrible fansites on Geocities. I learned how to touch type by typing up a catalog of SFF books various people in my school owned—not that many of us were SFF fans, and I had a dream of cataloging everything and putting up people's emails so you could just email someone to ask to borrow a book. (This is also how I learned that Tor ISBNs started with 0812 and Del Rey with 0345, or at least they did pre-ISBN-13.) Mostly I worked on my Gundam Wing fansite with my high school friend and ranted about web usability... in those days, site with a giant graphic, teeny weeny font, and creatively titled sections like "storm in feathers" or something for "guestbook." (Also, guestbooks. We had them, heh.)
I very much did not expect to get a job in web production, much less stay there, much less go into web usability as well. Not only that, but nearly all my tech skills were learned via fandom: women talking about vid codecs and building their own computers and coding fic challenge matching algorithms and rooting ereaders and changing journal layouts and posting how-tos and 101 guides made it so much more accessible. And a lot of those skills are ones I use in my job a lot (it's amazing how people think you are really proficient with tech when you know how to Google an error message and figure out what it means). I mean, I still hit up against Impostor Syndrome all the freaking time, but I probably wouldn't be in this field at all if it weren't for fandom.
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