Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with niche

Help an IT consultant find his niche!

thehickmans — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 20:27:05 -0800

I'm an IT consultant with a broad set of skills and experiences, and I need help finding my niche! Here's the background: 18 years in the "industry" starting as an infrastructure grunt, moved to system administration, then to IT management (Mgr -> AVP -> VP in charge of 30 person BA/PM/Dev/Infrastructure team in investment services firm), then out to consulting firm "selling" custom enterprise development. I'm now on my own doing planning, RFPs, project management, implementations, and whatever else they'll pay me for... This is month 7 of this current incarnation of my career, and I have a dream of building something beyond billing my own hours, but I'm still stumbling around trying to define my "niche".

The broad sense of "niche" I have been working with is to be an agnostic source of advice on IT planning and investment. My motivation behind this is that one of my biggest pet peeves is the "consultant" who's looking to solve an organization's business problems with a solution that carries 20 points of licensing revenue, 500 hours of services at 200 bucks an hour and 3 years of sustainment at 15% of total fees. Maybe I'm being naive and that is the way the game is meant to be played, but I'm looking for something more meaningful... if only I could find it!

So, I guess I'm looking for ideas, feedback, random anecdotal information, experiences from others who've done something similar.

Thanks in advance for your input!

What are some niche, street credit, cutting edge music sites where new bands can come to be found?

herbiehancock00 — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 15:59:08 -0800

What are some niche, street credit, cutting edge music sites where new bands can come to be found?

WANT AD: Food writer, dreams of travel, plenty K a year!

ElectricBlue — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 18:22:44 -0800

Do you know of any resources that give information on "niche" careers, preferably with personal anecdotes? Or even just career advice? I'm a sophomore in college and I'm still waffling on what I want to do when I graduate. My parents are concerned about what I intend to do with my English major. I've argued that you can do anything with said major, but they still worry.

I'm not quite sure what career path I want to follow. I'm thinking that a career guide (or a site with information about crazy niche jobs) will help center my focus. I'd like to think that I could wing right out of college--y'know, become a advertising copywriter or cake decorator or sound collector--but who knows?

If anyone knows of a guide (preferably online!), that'd be awesome. I don't think this question has been asked before; if it has, I'm sorry! I'll comb through the archives.

Can anyone recommend any independent, niche oriented documentaries that I could buy/rent/download?

armage — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 09:48:30 -0800

Can anyone recommend any independent, niche-oriented documentaries that I could buy/rent/download? [more inside] I'm a big fan of independent community- or interest-centric documentaries, especially those made by fans, even if I don't know much about the community in question. I'm talking about labors of love like Millennium's End: The Fandom Menace or Star Woids (about the lineups for Episode I and Star Wars fandom in general); BBS: The Documentary (about the history of the BBS); Dogtown and Z-Boys (about the birth of skateboarding in SoCal). Ideas?