As I mentioned in my last post, I wasn't exactly fluent in technology (I like to call it techno-wizardry) when I started this position. The people working at SYDCON have been helpful in their putting up with me and answering my interviewing questions about basically everything they do. PHP, heck, scripting languages in general, databases, Content Management Systems? What? It's like learning another language. I'll admit that the stuff is still over my head on a technical front but that's the beauty of the position: I'm not programming anything. As long as I know what it does, what the programmers do with it and how to talk about it I'm golden.

Considering that I had never even written a blog, I'm fairly proud of myself with how far I've come in understanding all of this. For somebody who still uses a flip phone and has only written prose and poetry and now writes highly-technical case studies, I would say I've made some progress. I've done research on not only the technology that I write about, but the companies we have developed websites for and even some grammar. Oh boy, grammar research. Sounds exciting, doesn't it? I actually am kind of a loser when it comes to that stuff, I actually enjoy picking apart sentences and making sure they are structurally sound (I get my daily laugh when I read web pages on grammar that have misspellings or grammar mistakes within their content. See what I mean?).

So there was a definite learning curve. A bit of re-writing, a bit more research. But now I can write a case study where I outline an entire project and talk in detail about our use of scripting languages and what they do, talk about the development of a CMS and populating a database with the specific company's product. And I have to really know about them so that I can talk about them in different ways per each individual study so there isn't duplicate content. No "copy and paste" paragraphs on the case studies means they are each written specifically for that project, just like our custom-built software.

My understanding of the services we offer in the case studies and my ability to talk about them have been aided by writing (guess what) our services pages. The detailed explanations of each service required in the description made knowledge of the service a necessity. Sure, I can't program an actual website in PHP or make a separate website for mobile device access, but I can relay the descriptive information to you so that it transforms from technical jargon to a description in the English language.

The growth of knowledge I've experienced in the short time I've been here has been interesting and necessary for me to do what I do with any success. It has also been fun to get smarter in an area I have little experience with. I feel like I've become not only more intelligent, but more able to integrate myself into current-day conversations regarding technology and the devices people are using instead of just saying "I don't know" or something of the sort.

I'm even thinking of getting a smart phone.