Guest Speaker Erik Hanberg

I had a great time listening to our guest speaker, Erik Hanberg, speak about how technology is used in his line of work and how it has fueled his successes. Some of the most interesting things that he has done are the network of Tacoma podcasts, and his own books that he has written. It is very cool to me that throughout his career he has done what this course has mainly been about, "Living and Working in a Virtual World". It is really crazy to think that as an author, he has been able to make a living selling his books online, and only being printed when needed to. This is helpful for him because he does not have to make more copies than what may be needed. He also talked about the Thousand True Fans book, and how it helped inspire and influence him to become an author, which I thought was pretty neat. A few other things I was curious about was how he ran the podcasts, such as how much money he was making on the podcasts, and if they were still regularly bought years down the line, like his books are. A few final thoughts I had about the whole event was that it really kind of motivated me to go after what I really want in life, like Erik did, and to keep working at it to eventually succeed at it. He wasn't always a writer and author, even though he always wanted to be, but he put in the work and eventually was able to live his dream.