Tools to Show Off Your Knowledge and Skills

So…we’re about to run into the same problem we had back in the Processing Phase: Different industries have different means of doing things. That makes it difficult to really explore on a general level the best tools to demonstrate knowledge.

So, we’re just going to avoid the problem by looking at general ways to show off…so to speak.

Thanks to advances in all sorts of technology, we actually have a collection of tools that can benefit most industries when it comes time to say, “This is what I can do. This is what I know.” Many of us either have, or have access to a friend who has, some sort of image capturing device, be it a still photo or a video. We have ways to record ourselves talking about things. We have tools that allow us to write about what we’ve done and to journal about how we did it.

In all fairness, we’ve had these abilities for quite a long time. (Well…maybe not for audio capture. That seems to be the slowpoke in the pack.) What’s changed is the means available to display what we’ve captured. We now have this tool, for better or worse, called the Internet. Maybe you’ve heard of it…

What makes the Internet such a game changer for us is that it allows us to share all those textual, image, video, and audio captures we’ve made of our work easily and on a grander scale. If you make a beautiful wood-turned rocker, you can take a picture of it and post it online. You can make a video of yourself working on a section of it and share it as part of sharing your process, or even to teach that technique to others by video. You can blog about your process, where the wood came from, where you learned your skills. You can create a podcast about the non-visual elements of your craft for people to learn from. You can even choose your favorite social media platform and curate a publicly available set of resources on your craft.

So, when we talk about tools meant to help demonstrate our skills and knowledge, we’re talking about capturing key details of not only the end product but also the process that allowed us to create that end product. You can demonstrate your knowledge by writing about your craft and curating images, videos, and links on it. There are so many options. You just have to find the one (or ones) that best suit your style, your industry’s style, and your visitors’ style, and then make it work for you.

This is a great time to experiment, to be transparent in your work, to really show off yourself and your abilities.