The world is changing crazy fast everyday, especially lately with new tech coming onto the market everyday. It’s hard to keep up. It’s so fast it makes almost going to school pointless because you’re out of date before you even finish.
Seriously? That last sentence sounds ridiculous, but what it really pertains to is formal “bring your books to class” school. It’s out of date. That’s why you have to take it on yourself to stick to the ABL of life, “Always Be Learning”. Sounds alot like the sales motto “Always Be Closing”, but it’s better. For example:
I’ve been writing and learning about HTML since I was about 14, but I never had any formal training. In some ways this was good because I learned to manipulate part of the code based on my experience and needs, but this was also bad because I only knew how to write bloated code. I only learned from what I saw others doing. It stifled my creativity because it took me so long to get down the basics. This was just something I did for fun and never pursued as a career. Instead, I went to school for marketing. I’m glad I did because it gave me the business know how to do the things I do today, but the odd part is I wouldn’t be anywhere close to the position I’m in without knowing HTML.
HTML got me my first marketing job, not my degree. But the marketing degree got me in the door with the parent company that I currently work with. Having HTML in my skillset then put me in a position to change roles to work with a great manager and team. Because that new role that involved both marketing and HTML I was able to flourish and was then snagged into my new position of managing an incubator (full story).
So what do I do now? My current job has some marketing aspects, but not really any HTML. So what do I do?
Read, learn and take anything I can get. Because I work with awesome people, one of my coworkers has offered for to take me and a designer through an 8 week course he put together for HTML. To be honest I’ve been doing this around 15 years and know quite a bit about it, but I’ll take it!! I just finished lesson 2 tonight and learned quite a bit. I was stumped on a couple little pieces. I would love to see how he solves these problems I hit and I can’t wait to watch and learn.
So the key is Always Be Learning. You never what you’ll need.
Today’s music video is not a music video, because it’s time to learn and not listen to tunes!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIpm6M6ecBM&w=420&h=315]