Tooting my own horn is a point of discomfort for me, especially for a potentially global audience. Oh, I can certainly tell you—as we are sipping a delicious red—that my business can help you and I’m darned good at what I do, but seeing as I never saw myself as a ‘Tech Expert’ (or even wanted to be one,) I find it awkward if not ludicrous that I am starting a personal blog about being a “technology expert”. I’ve written blog posts for students, my job, blogged about blogging and web design, but blogging about me as a founder of Wordimagemedia and my technological expertise? Ugh! But here it is. My new blog. (And I promise, this blog will NOT just be about me.)
Let me introduce myself. My name is Dina —born Ruth, use Alcalay—Pearlman. I’m an instructor of
In college, right before I became a tech-geek
Graphic and Web Design, Adobe software, Art History and Art Foundations primarily at a small, but highly ranked community college called SUNY Ulster (and yes, I designed that siteas well.) I also have a web design and photographic post-production business called Wordimagemedia—or WIM, my acronym (see rant about acronyms below). Because I can use computers, and have been doing so in a professional capacity since the 1980s, I have become the person that my friends call when they have a computer issue. It has made me unique amongst most of my social peers. And it has kept me employed for my entire adult life. I finally can say that I like my work: I love solving design and technology problems. It’s fun, it’s engaging and very, very empowering.
English: Frame-breakers, or Luddites, smashing a loom. Machine-breaking was criminalized by the Parliament of the United Kingdom as early as 1721, the penalty being penal transportation, but as a result of continued opposition to mechanisation the Frame-Breaking Act 1812 made the death penalty available: see “Criminal damage in English law”.
I really am a Luddite at heart. I mean, how the hell do you rebel against your parents when your Dad invented one of the most popular music synthesizers in the world? Why get an antique Gibson hollow-body with a tube Ampeg amp, of course… but that’s another story. I was the last person to get CDs (loved vinyl and album covers!) the very last person to switch to digital photography (my fingers permanently smell like Kodak fixer). But eventually switch I did. After that the course of my life changed and I somehow ended up jumping on board of nearly all major computer graphics technologies right before they became wildly popular. And after a colleague recently called me an SME, I had to admit that maybe I do know a little about a lot of things in the digital world
But it wasn’t by choice. It was by survival.
A SME. Okay, so I’m already talking elitist speak. And it’s annoying, I know. When I start using the multiple acronyms necessary in discussions about all things cyber (SEO, CSS, FTP DOM) and I see eyelids start to droop around me, I am certainly sympathetic. What is an SME? According to a search, there are at least 81 definitions of a SME but the one I’m referring to is this one “Subject Matter Expert.” Yeah, in the world of imaging software, that’s me, I’m a SME.
Here is the context. My inner child really wants to just draw, write haiku and dance to the drum all day. But during the course of my life, I’ve learned that keeping up with technology gives you an edge when it comes to things like making a living, and having conversations with someone you hope want to hire you. And when your new boyfriend in 1986 buys you some CDs you finally get a CD player. It’s that simple.
Floppy Disk circa 1980s
I have been blessed with good timing. When I was finishing up my education, I was offered a choice of taking calculus or an Intro to Computer Science course. I balked at the very idea of calculus and the next thing you know I was plotting coordinates using Basic and booting up my Apple Computer with a floppy disk!
It gets better. I started my education hoping to get a degree in Fine Art. My parents had other ideas: I needed to have job skills and I was persuaded to make my major Graphic Design. During the time at Mass Art, I switched to photography. Mind you, there was no such thing as computers in either medium in the early 80s.
I landed a job at Houghton Mifflin Publishing in the late 1980’s, doing paste-up for book jackets in the art department, but the paste-up didn’t last very long, and I learned how to use Macs on the job. We were the first publishing company to use computers. I took to them like a fish to water. It was fun, easy and best of all, a new and highly desirable skill. I used Aldus Freehand, Adobe Illustrator 88 and Microsoft something. While I was terrible at paste-up, I excelled at learning the computer and software, and I never looked back.
Mac Classic aka “door stopper”
My big break was the job at Cayman Systems. I started off as a temp (MacTemps) and wore various hats at this early networking router company. What made this experience so important to me was two things. First, we used something called Microsoft Mail and CompuServe email, and while my first messages were something like a cross between passing notes in school and interoffice sexting, I was using the internet well before 1990. AOL wasn’t yet a household name, and connections were on dial-up. Second, I bought my first Mac (the boxy door-stopper model that I recently saw in an exhibit at MoMA) and became adept at using it.
I’ve been lucky enough to be near lots of open doors to walk during my career; but you have to take that first step and walk through them. Because of this, I learned what I know from the ground up. I worked at a photo lab that switched from Scitex, Quantel’s Painbox to Photoshop and trained me in Photoshop. I apprenticed to a web designer 10 years my junior in the 19902 at a ‘dot com’ in the late 90s had the privilege of another on-the-job training: web design. Did I learn everything on the job? —no, but I faked it till I could make it and supplemented this knowledge with as many courses as I could at Parsons, FIT and other New York City schools.
Which sort of proves a point. If an undisciplined, punk-rocker, modern dancer, quasi-artist, dark-room technician can quietly turn into a SME about all manners of digital media, teaching it, and being the principal of a business that offers services in all manners of digital media, then anyone can learn if they surrender to the opportunities that show up. Look for the open doors around you; be present! Don’t poo-poo something because it’s new. Try it, experiment, believe in yourself and allow yourself to stumble and make mistakes along the way. Experts, SMEs are made, they aren’t born that way.
