So, what do you do?

Written on September 30, 2008 – 8:18 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur

Don’t you hate that question? I always have a very hard time explaining people what it is I do exactly. The above diagram explains some of the pitfalls of trying to explain what you do if you are a designer. Same could apply for entrepreneur/blogger/marketeer/SEO expert or any of our other ‘modern’ professions…

I hope you like that post!

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cartoon, designer, entrepreneur

About the author: Serial entrepreneur and founder of several companies. Current activities include TwitterCounter.com and The Next Web Conference & Blog.

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9 comments/trackbacks to “So, what do you do?”

Oct 1, 2008: Und - was machst Du so? - Netzlogbuch
[...] Grafik, die ich bei thenextweb.org gefunden habe, gibt recht genau den Verlauf des darauf folgenden Gesprächs [...]

By Marijn on Sep 30, 2008

I always think ah again some guy that calls his hobby his work.
Sorry but it sometimes looks like every idiot can be a webdesigner. You can see that on all those ugly websites on the net.

[Reply]
By Joshua on September 30th, 2008:
I agree, but not every webdesigner is an idiot :)

Too many ugly websites: true. I went to the Fortis-website at http://www.fortis.nl because of all the news.
not nice.. and not even the ugliest of them all.

[Reply]
By Bart on Sep 30, 2008

Exactly! Today someone at office asked me how she could merge two Excel files. I donno… If it where MySQL tables, no problem! :)

[Reply]
By David Petherick on Sep 30, 2008

Mike Davis hates that question too - he wrote ‘29 Different Ways to Start a Conversation’ just a few days ago - http://twurl.nl/cpfwr4

My solution is that, with the help of a BBC interview where they provided some poor descriptions, I came up with my own, better job description, which was entirely new. But sometimes, when I say “I’m a Digital Biographer” I still get asked about email problems.

And oddly enough, ‘entrepreneur/blogger/marketeer/SEO expert’ is a scarily accurate description of a lot of my work - just a little tricky to fit on a little business card…

[Reply]
By Hoof on Sep 30, 2008

On my card is ‘New Media Director’, so I can adjust the explanation in every situation. When the email problem pops up I can always tell that I have my people to take care of that. Unless there is a nice lady involved. Then I could try to find a moment to get to the bottom of her. Eh, it.

[Reply]
By Floris Dekker on Oct 1, 2008

here’s a movie about it:

http://swissmiss.typepad.com/w.....aphic.html

I don’t think we should complain though, imagine if your an engineer or something…

[Reply]
By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on October 1st, 2008:
That was a funny movie! 26,360 views on Youtube so far. here is a direct link to the movie: http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=oeRwFkjQe6s

[Reply]
By Robin Wauters on Oct 1, 2008

Great graph. I hate getting asked what I do because I’m involved in so many things. I have 5 different business cards for God’s sake.

[Reply]