Caterina Fake: Teach Yourself

Caterina Fake is best known for being the co-founder of Flickr, which pioneered a ton of the things that we now take for granted on the internet: social networking, tagging, and content surfacing algorithms to name just a few.

But like many of us, her career path has been - to say the least - unpredictable. On the way to becoming the co-founder of Flickr, Caterina Fake explored everything from banking to graphic design to writing novels, and she's now the Chairman of the Board for Etsy, a board member at Creative Commons, and on the board of advisors for the Berkeley School of Information. And while there's a narrative in our culture that this sort of winding path indicates that something went wrong, I believe the opposite - I believe that it creates the sort of eclectic, versatile people who will (like Caterina) thrive in the new "skill economy."

Today on the podcast,

* How Caterina ended up co-founding Flickr and ultimately selling it to Yahoo even though she grew up as a self-described "artsy girl" - a far cry from what many would expect of a tech founder

* Some great advice for writers, specifically around how to create the kind of habits that will get you into the groove of relentless daily productivity, and keep you there

* Why she calls herself a "reclusive extrovert" and why online communities are an ideal fit for reclusive extroverts

This episode first appeared on CreativeLive as part of the 30 Days of Genius series. Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.chasejarvis.com/podcast.

This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world's largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world's top experts -- Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.