I always get two questions from people: “What do you do?” I explain to them that I am the LaserJet Web 2.0 Strategic Lead at HP. This is always followed with the question: “So what do you do?” The second question is much harder to answer.
Mike Manuel has a great post about the “Messy Middle.”
The messy middle is where several historically disparate business disciplines are intersecting; it’s the place where marketers, communicators, product developers, customer support folks, and arguably other arms of an organization all meet and mix to maximize their efforts, thanks to the social web.
I’ve found that this is an especially confusing place to be in, the larger the organization. At HP there are literally hundreds of *Marketing* people just at the Boise campus. And if you’ve seen our big push into social media you might get an idea of how many people are all working on different pieces of the mess. And it isn’t just in Marketing. HR, Knowledge Management, Customer Service are all using different social networking apps to do their jobs better.
Managing this mess is turning out to be very exciting and very difficult (I guess that’s what makes it exciting). It’s difficult because there really is no *one person* managing it. For most people Web 2.0 is a component that they use to do their existing job more effectively. And that’s the way it should be. And ultimately, in another 3-5 years it will just be a standard part of your job if you’re involved in communications.
Until then there are people like me who specialize in just that aspect of communication. As new media becomes standard in all areas of communication I wonder if someone like me, who is perceived as a specialist will eventually be perceived as a generalist.
BTW it’s really fun to listen to my wife try and answer the “What does your husband do?” question 
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Yeah, my wife is able to tell people that I’m a Web guy at the newspaper, but she’s mostly lost if someone asks her to elaborate.
I get a little annoyed by that question. In my mind it is very clear what I do, but when it comes to explaining to people what I do and the value it provides they sometimes get a glazed-over look.
I often reference a book called “Book Yourself Solid” by Michael Port. Basically, he says you need to throw out the elevator speech we’ve all been taught to create and come up with a simple statement called “Who and Do What”.
Port’s statement is “I’m the guy you call when you want to stop thinking small and start thinking big.”
I’ve come up with my own: “I make technology easy to learn and easy to use.”
The advantage is the statement opens up a dialog for honest, meaningful conversation with the other person.