What's your subscribtions ?
During an average work year I travel to a lot of seminars and lectures to keep myself constantly updated on the various fields of interest – partly to my own satisfaction and some because my clients would expect me to know something about a certain topic.
You bump into people which you would expect to have several things in common. Tech-news, programming, design theories, visual developments and so forth. But how do you quickly decide if the person standing in front of you is simply faking his way through namedropping and tech-slang – or one of the true believers ?
I’ve discovered that asking about what magazines you subscribe to .. is a pretty good indicator, and will flush out most buzzword-bingo-champions.
You see – if you’ve gone to great lengths to not only subscribe to a magazine of a certain subject – but also made the commitment of paying a full year ahead in time. Chances are good that you actually care about it’s subject and read about it out of sincere interest.
My own experience tells me that a lot of people will define themselves as belonging to “this-and-this” group of people. But a lot of them never really got around to subscribing to news and developments in that field of interest. .. and needless to say, I think thats a real pitty.
My own subscribtions (thanks for asking)
- ComputerArts
- ComputerArts Projects
- ImagineFX
- Cinefex
- Advanced Photoshop
- PC Player
- EDGE
- Layers
Someone might argue that in the digital age a podcast-subscribiton / rss-feed is just as good. And to stay informed I’d agree – but not to quickly get an indicator if someone is actually genuienlty interested in a subject .. and ready to pay for the insight.
So – what are you reading atm. and is it time to make some subscribtions ? :)
/Bo