I understand what you're getting at, I have a huge amount of trouble trying to get people to understand what I do at the office. I even have trouble explaining

I understand what you're getting at, I have a huge amount of trouble trying to get people to understand what I do at the office. I even have trouble explaining it to java-land "enterprise" programmers. But, here's the thing. About 5 months ago I started working on a product that I am hoping will be the basis for launching my own start-up. This particular product was something that people could immediately understand was useful. It did some of those magical things that their computer does, and that they think they couldn't understand in a million years. And all of a sudden, instead of people's eyes glazing over, I started getting comments like "I really don't know how you do this stuff, that's amazing!" There seem to be two things that are important here - one is that you need to be working on a product that is user-facing, so that they can actually use what you have just made. The second thing is that it has to be done just by you, or by you and just a couple of friends. It was you, and not some faceless organisation that did it, even if you were a part of the organisation.