From Jen in the IT Crowd to creating a “Digital Bible”

I started working in the digital marketing world about a year ago, previous to that I managed events (with little relevance, other than social media, to digital marketing or building websites).

Being the first studio coordinator/schedule manager/project tracker/Birthday cake baker/Cornish bird at Reckless I had a real challenge ahead of me. Although I lacked knowledge of the digital marketing industry, I quickly learnt that my organisational skills and event management hat very much applied here too, more so than I originally thought.

In my new role I had to learn how to juggle like an octopus, with many arms and many balls! Just like being an event manager, it was a good feeling that where I came from wasn’t a million miles away from where I had arrived. Obviously, with any new job, it came with a few hurdles to leap over.

The one main obstacle I came across was the acronyms…xml feed, css, html, php, ssl, dns, sql… the list goes on. So in my head, when I heard one of these mentioned in conversation, all I would hear is something along the lines of “when I get the thingy, I will be able to do the thingy that makes the thingy do it’s thing”. At first I was a little embarrassed to ask what is “thingy”? and why do you need it? what does it do? etc. I would picture myself as Jen from the IT Crowd when she asks Moss to talk her through what he is working on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHgWsTymr-E

I’m always learning new things everyday and I still have that moment occasionally where I feel like Jen, but now I’m not afraid to ask what, why, how, and 9 times out of 10 I get an explanation (other 1 time is usually a sarcastic comment!). To record what I learn I use Google Docs and have created my very own “Digital Bible”.

I plan to blog about what I learn from web development language, project management, and anything in between.

Join me on my digital adventure and if you have any suggestions for blog posts or want to add any comments about your newbie learning experience fire away. Or better still, start your own blog!