Besides being the Editor-in-Chief, I’m also the PR guy for Icrontic. I try to get out and socialize a bit and talk to people about our community and what we’re doing here. Most of the time everyone I talk to has nice things to say about us, but one thing I hear quite often is, “I visited Icrontic but it’s way over my head.” or, “I love Icrontic but I don’t feel nerdy enough.”
Clearly, we talk about some pretty esoteric things sometimes, like the new Killmoves in Alien vs. Predator or the latest news on 40nm wafer yields from TSMC. I’ll be honest with you: I don’t really know what some of this stuff means, either.
It can be difficult to capture, on paper at least, what Icrontic actually is. I have been with the site since the beginning, and even I have trouble explaining it sometimes. Icrontic is, first and foremost, a community of like-minded people. Like any community, each of us has our own interests, strengths and weaknesses, idiosyncracies, and loves. Trying to capture all of that, channelize it, and funnel it into a content management system was an undertaking of mammoth proportions.
Because the bulk of Icrontic content is user-contributed, we have an organic ebb-and-flow of types of stories. Ultimately, this is one of our greatest strengths, but it can sometimes make the normal content stream a bit lopsided. If you’ve ever come to Icrontic, taken a glance, and felt intimidated, I encourage you to explore a little bit deeper. Check out other channels, or stop by the forums just to say hi. There are many, many gateways into this community, but some are a little trickier to find than others. Perhaps you may not know your RAM from your hard drive, but you may really like music. Maybe you are a photographer. Did you just see James Cameron’s AVATAR? Want to talk about it with passionate people who argue the merits and downsides of it?
The secret is: you don’t have to be a geek, a gamer, or a computer builder. Icrontic is, at the most basic level, just a fun place to hang out. New people who find a way to connect with us—whether it be as a casual “lurker” or an active participant—inevitably find themselves saying “Man I can’t believe I’ve been missing this.”
If you’re on the internet, Icrontic has something for you. If you own a phone, we have something for you. If you have ever played a video game, drank a beer, listened to the radio, been to a gym, or gotten dressed, well—we have something for you too.
Stick around. We love new friends.
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