Meeting People from the Tubes

I will be meeting a lot of new people that I have only previously talked to over Xbox LIVE, Facebook, or Twitter. This is pretty common for events like PAX East. Here are some tips to make meeting in person less awkward.

1) A week or two before meeting the people from the Intertubes, set your Avatar as a picture of yourself. If we agreed to meet at a certain place at a designated time it might help if I know what you look like.

2) Introduce yourself as either [Twitter/Gamertag] followed by your real name or vice versa. To be honest, if I’ve been talking to you for weeks as your alias, I wont remember your real name and may continue to call you the alias in real life.

3) Have a pen handy to write your Twitter handle or Gamertag on your business card if it isn’t already printed on it. If I’m going through a 100+ cards post-PAX I will get to yours and go “Who is this?” and assume it was a random card that was thrown at me at a late night mixer.

 

New to Conventions?

[Note: There were more comments than I expected. Please make sure to read through them as there are some great additional suggestions that I didn't get in the original post. Enjoy!]

Here is a list of tips for those that are new to industry events/conventions:

Comfy walking shoes
No, really. You will be on your feet for hours on hard surfaces. On top of that, you’ll be walking the city for food and to your hotel. Keep your feet happy or you’ll be limping by day two.

How Do I Get a Job at Xbox?

This was written for the Xbox Engineering blog back in May 2010. Posting again so I have it archived in my feed. If you haven’t read it before, enjoy!

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Before we get rolling, some of you may have noticed that my title is Community Coordinator.  Unlike my peers who have posted to this blog before me, I am not an engineer.  My role spans across the Official Xbox Forums, the MVP program, competitive analysis, community events, etc.  As part of my role, I feel it is my duty to step up and answer the one question that I and everyone here at Xbox HQ get asked more than “I can haz Recon?”:  “How do I get a job at Xbox?”  Please note that I’m writing this from the angle of helping out someone who is still in college or very early in their career development, but I hope this serves of some use to anyone looking to get into Xbox regardless of professional experience.