So Kelly, who is my partner in several projects and good friend asked who would like to have a cross blog conversation with her and I just had to jump. I love to chat with others and this sounds like fun. If you aren’t quite sure how this works, Kelly started the conversation on her blog and I’ll answer it here. To follow up on her reply, you visit her blog.

Alright. So she asked me,

You are known for your love of technology and your familiarity with complicated scripts and code that intimidate the rest of us so completely.  Is it REALLY as easy for you as you make it look?

Please share a little about how you get started in all this techy stuff and how you really feel about it.

To the first part of the question How Easy Is It Really?

For the most part, when it comes to web development it’s easy. It’s second nature for me. When I encounter something new and have decided to pursue it, I’ll spend hours upon hours learning the ropes. I know it sounds counter intuitive to many business owners because you aren’t supposed to learn all that technical stuff and you aren’t. But because it is my business to know, I learn it.

There are limitations to my knowledge of course. I cannot know everything. There are lots of tech stuff that I don’t know intimately for example, hardware enough to be dangerous but not great. Networking is the same thing. Don’t ask me anything about Linux or Macs unless it has to do with web hosting and I certainly cannot write desktop applications to save my life. There’s little interest in these for me so yes in those areas I struggle.

Even stuff that I am familiar I do get stuck ocassionally. For that, the search engine is always your best friend or Twitter for that matter.

Sometimes, I feel like tearing my hair out but 99% of the time, I love this stuff. Really love it. To me it’s like a never ending puzzle and I love puzzles, brain teasers, investigation, getting to the root of problems and more importantly, creating things. Just like some people love creating articles, blog posts, info products, podcasts, videos etc. I love creating useful scriplets, mini software and sites that people can use, interact with and clients can use to deliver their creations.

Getting started is a little hazy because there’s no clear definite time. It’s not like I woke up one day and decided this was going to be it. It’s a progression, a development like most things in life are. Probably started when I worked for Canon and they had a very high emphasis in training. I was put in marketing for office automation and you know they actually teach you every single part of the machine and the history of a copier. I thought it was nuts in the beginning because what does a sales and marketing person have to do with learning how the toner fuses onto the paper?

It was quite technical but realized I enjoyed learning about machines and enjoyed seeing how automation fit in our clients’ businesses. The seed was planted then and when I met Alice Seba she helped me cultivate and eventually harvest this skill.