Three weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being invited to a workshop organized by the Women’s Business Council. Their current President happens to be my former boss, who has always been my mentor. Since she knew that I was soon going into business, she invited me to join the event, wherein the results of a survey on small and medium-scale entrepreneurs (SMEs) were discussed. Later in the day, the group of about 30 women entrepreneurs was divided into several smaller groups. Each group represented a particular concern that typical SMEs face such as marketing, finance, social concerns and the like. Well, the members of each group were preselected according to their expertise. Guess which group they made me join?
I was asked to join the I.T. group. What?! That took me by surprise because I don’t consider myself very knowledgeable in I.T. Apparently, just because I blog and because I’m always on Facebook and Twitter, I was already considered to be techie. Ummm….okay. I looked around at the women in the entire room and I swear they all had either a Blackberry or an iPhone. Some even brought their iPad with them. I had none of those. I certainly was not techie enough in that aspect.
However, thinking about it, I understand why people would consider me techie. I am always on the Internet. From not really knowing anything about blogging, I was able to grow this blog mostly on my own. Back when I first started blogging, I had no idea how to use CSS, HTML and SEO. Yet, I was also able to manage Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. You can also find me in other forms of social media. I have taught myself how to use a variety of tools to manage all these. Most of my closest friends don’t even have a Twitter account. There are also a few who aren’t on Facebook either. So, I guess in that regard, I am quite techie.
The thing is I can’t help but try to be more techie everyday. Most of my work now involve using the Internet day in and day out. I can’t afford not to know these things but since I don’t want to enroll in expensive seminars to teach me how to use certain tools, I have to find ways to teach myself. How? Well, that’s what the World Wide Web is all about. You can learn about all sorts of stuff on the Internet. Most of what I know now I’ve learned from reading a lot of tech blogs. There are a lot of them out there that are actually really very helpful and I am so grateful for that.
So, for those of you who want to be a bit more techie, I encourage you to keep learning. You can learn from the Internet or from other more techie people you know. However you choose to learn, I’m sure it will benefit you in some way. These days, it doesn’t hurt at all to be techie.
photo credit: charliebarker via photopin cc