I’ve had many interesting conversations with people over the past few months, all revolving around the question: How Do I Become What I Want To Be? There’s a lot of passionate and talented people out there trying to create something uniquely suited to themselves. The variety is great: there are developers switching to design, engineers getting into music composition, usability experts banging their heads against client ignorance, and designers trying to differentiate themselves in crowded markets. I find it all very inspiring.

While I don’t have the answers, I’m on the same journey of exploration. I’ve written on this a few times:

• Building a Niche Of One — How will I turn my uniqueness into some kind of competitive advantage?

• Separating Work from Passion — Maybe work and life aren’t the same thing, as much as I want them to be.

• Passion Turn Me Round and Round — Um, do I even know what I’m good at?

• Thinking Negative — Or maybe I’m actually really bad and don’t even know it.

• New Year, New Direction — Well, maybe things aren’t so bad after all. Even if I don’t know precisely what I’m doing, I do know a direction to move in.

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p>These have struck a chord in many of the people I’ve been emailing. At the end of each thread I’ve thought, “you know, this stuff might be interesting to other people I’m talking to.” Keeping everyone in the loop is becoming a logistical problem, so I decided to set up a private forum on my unused davidseah.net domain.

Yes, you read that right: it’s private. However, anyone who is willing to write a brief story about themselves will be allowed to register. It just has to cover the following in a paragraph or two:

1. Where are you now in your career/life?
2. How you get here?
3. What is it that you want to do next?

Browse the public forum for more information, then register if it sounds interesting.

There are some rules I’m borrowing from the New Media Group to try and keep maintain high signal-to-noise. I’m not sure exactly how this will turn out, but I’m hoping that it’s something good.

UPDATE: By the way, after you register for the forum, you should get a password mailed to you. Since it is generated by punBB, some mail program might flag it as junk mail, so keep an eye out for it.

After you get your password, LOGIN and then enter your story in the “Complete Your Registration” forum topic. Yes, yes, it’s a somewhat involved process, but such is the price of entry. If you have any problems, feel free to email me via the contact form.