Over the holidays, I talked about how hard it is to explain what I do to family members, friends, and other people living in the regular world who find our web worker ways very foreign. This is complicated by my many side projects and diverse work that make it difficult to explain what I do in a concise way, which is another point that Tina Brown makes about how long it takes us to describe what we do in this new gig economy.

I usually respond with some variant of the rambling found below when someone asks me what I do.

“I’m a freelance online community and social media consultant who helps companies build online communities and social media strategies. My company is called Fast Wonder, and I also have a blog by that name where I talk about online communities, social media engagement, Yahoo Pipes, and other related topics. I also blog on Web Worker Daily. Oh, I’m also the community evangelist for a Portland startup called Shizzow. Or maybe you know me as one of the co-founders and board members of Legion of Tech, which organizes events like BarCampPortland and Ignite Portland. I also organize other events for geeks just for fun in my spare time …”

This is usually followed by questions about what all of this really means, how I make money doing this, or how I manage to do all of this without losing my mind.

How do you describe the breadth of what you do without sounding like a crazy person? Do we, as web workers, have our own language?

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