http://carl.flax.ie/dothingstellpeople.html

Do things, tell people.

These are the only things you need to do to be successful^*. You can
get away with just doing one of the two, but that's rare, and usually
someone else is doing the other part for you.

If you you don't have any marketable skills, learn some. It's the
future. We have Khan Academy and Wikipedia and Codecademy and almost
the entire world's collective knowledge at your fingertips. Use it.

Then make something that you can talk about. Make something cool.
Something interesting. Spend time on it. Go crazy. Even if it's the
least useful thing you've ever made, if you can talk about it, make
it. This part is easy, because you're doing something you think is
cool, and interesting, and if it's useless, great, because you won't
need to support it much either!

Next, find events where the people you want to work with are. Then
get a drink into you (or don't) and talk to them about it. Relax.
It's probably interesting to them too. Even if it's not, because
you've made it, you sound like you know what the hell you're talking
about. That's the important part. This is easy, too, because you're
talking about something you've made that you think is cool and
interesting. As an added bonus, many people go to these events just
to talk about cool and interesting things, so you'll fit right in.

You would not believe how much opportunity is out there for those who
do things and tell people. It's how you travel the entreprenurial
landscape. You do something interesting and you tell everyone about
it. Then you get contacts, business cards, email addresses. Then you
get contracts, job offers, investors, whatever. You make friends who
think what you do is cool. You make a name for yourself as "the
person who did that cool thing." Then, the next time someone wants to
do something in any way related to that cool thing, they come to you
first.

Ciaran McCann and I (mostly him) started working on a HTML5 game
engine and blog when we were in first year of college. We never even
finished it, but because of Flax, we landed internships at Ericsson
in the summer of our second year. Now I'm on my way to Game Closure,
and Ciaran is going to Demonware. We just did things and told people.

*[I define successful as "taking advantage of personally interesting
opportunities," but I think that this mantra works for success in
terms of money also. I don't really mean success in a
life-fulfillment way, although that depends on what exactly it is
that you want to do. Also, I'm fully aware that this doesn't extend
to people in many situations.]

@csl_