I have a food and nutrition blog, a photo blog and an art blog. Why do I now want a professional blog?
Since completing my MS in Engineering Management (MSEM), I have decided it is time to toot my professional horn. My job is very broad, but my job description is very narrow. This blog will allow me to talk about all the things I do that go beyond my job description (with proprietary information scrubbed). I do everything from strategy and planning, project management, data analysis (including big data), marketing communications, and application and software development. I am equal parts coder, planner, technologist, strategist and analyst. At the core of everything I do is the data. I am a self-proclaimed data nerd. Here is where I will talk about all of that.
The main audience for this blog will be people in my field – digital marketing analysis. However, I do my best to communicate in layman’s terms because that is a big part of what I do every day – communicate complex issues to colleagues and leadership who do not necessarily understand the nuances of what we do. I consider this akin to teaching and I do love to teach which is why I volunteer at a local zoo as a docent – it gives me the opportunity to teach guests about our animals. At the same time, this blog isn’t for everyone. I suspect it will be boring to many people. My goal is not to make everyone happy – my goal is to teach a little, tell some stories and represent the breadth of my knowledge.
Imposter?
Another very real reason I have created this blog is help me feel less like an imposter. Yes, I suffer from imposter syndrome. I have never followed a traditional route to anything and am mostly self-taught when it comes to technology. My self-training dates back to the early 1980s when I worked as a pharmacy tech at a large pharmacy chain in the South. The chain began installing IBM PCs in all of their pharmacies moving the industry from typewriters and carbon-copy labels to PCs and dot matrix printers. I showed an interest and was recruited to become an installer and trainer.
As part of the training for that role, they sent us to their headquarters to spend a week assembling the computers we would be installing and teaching pharmacists and technicians to use. Yup, they bought them in pieces. We assembled them from the ground up. We thought we looked pretty cool going out to lunch still wearing our anti-static wrist straps. It was around this time that I got hooked on “computers.” You would think I would have studied Computer Science in college. Nope. I studied everything but. My majors as an undergraduate were (in this order) Pharmacy, Journalism, Political Science and German. I eventually graduated with a B.A. in Political Science and a B.A. in German. I went to graduate school (the first time) for a PhD in Sociology. While in graduate school, I was “the computer person” and helped run the data lab for some extra income. About the time I was working on my dissertation, the World Wide Web was born (yes, we called it that back then). I taught myself HTML as soon as I knew what it was. I later taught myself PHP and MySQL and a career was born. And here I am today. An imposter.
Deep down I know I am not really an imposter. I think I do excellent work and I think I have a strong aptitude for technology and, because of my “real” training, communications and teaching. But I do still feel like an imposter sometimes. A lot of people in my field call themselves software engineers. I struggle calling myself that without a computer engineering degree. But if there is anything the MSEM program taught me, it is that titles and labels don’t really matter. Doing matters. And doing well matters – along with a lot of other qualities that go beyond the basic engineering skill sets like empathy, compassion, leadership and people skills – the so-called “soft” skills. When it comes to leadership and influence, understanding people and communicating well are the keys to success. There is nothing “soft” about that.
While I do sometimes feel like an imposter, I have become better at identifying those instances and that is why this blog is here. It is to show what I can do either through “how to” articles on projects that have done well for us or through stories about my professional life. If it helps me feel a little less like an imposter, great. If it helps anyone else solve a professional or personal dilemma, all the better.
The Real Me
I am also a pretty straightforward person. I tell it like it is. I do not have a poker face and whatever I am feeling at the moment pretty much shows. I have learned to embrace that (and control it a little – for the better – not everyone needs to see my irrelevant moods). This blog will reflect the real me. I may have some typos. I may have some poorly constructed sentences. I may even be completely wrong about something I profess to be right about. I will try to remedy those but I won’t hide them. At the end of the day, I am confident in my skills and it’s time I put myself out there.
I have no idea who will read this blog or if it will even be received within my industry, but, no matter what, I will stand behind whatever I write. I take pride in what I do.
