Renaissance Tech Guy

There comes a time when you need to make a choice. For me, 2012 is that time.

For the last 11 years I’ve been swimming in a bunch of shallow pools. Web development, graphic design, banner ad design and development (Flash, Actionscript, Photoshop), customer service, phone system installation and administration, CRM administration, web server administration, among others. I was the Renaissance Man in my company. Whenever something came up that no one had experience with, I agreed to take on the project. I loved being that guy because I love to learn new things and I have this huge propensity for learning technical concepts and procedures very quickly. I enjoyed learning to write a press release one day and then configuring Microsoft Dynamics CRM the next.

But what happens when you’re the Renaissance tech guy is that you float forever on the fringes of the company org chart. You’re not really a part of the marketing department or the IT department even though you’re doing important projects for them both. You’re not really a system administrator even though you’re managing the phone system and you’re not a developer even though you’re helping customer service update their member database. You’re forever learning bits and pieces of all aspects of the company but you’re not involved in making decisions for any of them.

I spent the last five or six years without a job title. I was Creative Director when I built all of the banner ad assets and designed all of the graphics. I was Web Developer when I was designing or developing a new site. I was API Integration Specialist when I wrote documentation for our API and helped customers implement it on their own web sites. But a proper business card would have to say something like “Wearer of Many Hats” or “Renaissance Tech Guy.”

2012 is when I will plunge into the deep end. No more water wings or inflatable life preservers. The pool might be filled with HTML/CSS. It might be overflowing with WordPress. It might be full of Windows/Linux web servers and phone systems. Regardless what it contains I will work hard to find the right one and jump in ready to swim the 1200 meter freestyle.