What I do

When your family asks what it is you do is there an easy answer? It must be nice for carpenters and the like: "Oh, I'm a carpenter".
The company I work for makes video and audio editing hardware and software. Thats kind of a mouthfull to get out as a quick explanation. I had been saying "I work for a company that makes the things that make TV" but that required alot of explanation. If it seemed like the person was real interested I'd follow up with "Stanley makes hammers right? Stanley doesn't make houses, they make the things that make houses. Avid doesn't make TV shows, we make the things that make TV shows."
I'm a trainer. I thought the name "trainer" was pretty clear. Now that I think about it though I wonder if people thought I was a personal trainer. If you've seen me you know my physique doesn't lend any credibility to that... So "Instructor" works better and is actually on my business card. It does lend the question "Well what do you instruct?" I teach people how to support large shared storage arrays, but nobody knows what that means. So now I tell people, "I teach how to use really big harddrives." I kind of like thinking that people envision harddrives big enough to ride in....

-Curt