Hindsight is a wonderful thing. As my career, in recent years has become more enmeshed in digital communication I look back on my high school years and wonder just how different things might have been if my early propensity for programming had been fostered. No one really knew in the mid 80’s that computing was going to become so fundamental to our daily lives and certainly, in small rural schools no one expected a girl to get involved.
My, how times have changed.
My daily work life is grounded in HTML, CSS, ASP, YouTube, Video streaming, and large-scale communication with organization members via a comprehensive website, RSS feeds, Podcasting, electronic direct marketing and bulk SMS messages delivered via the web. While self-taught, I’ve honed these skills by hours and hours of experimentation and research. My home life is spent maintaining friendships via Facebook, and Twitter and my overseas family keeps up to date with my life via a blog, Skype and a Flickr account. Here I am embracing digital life and I couldn’t be more fascinated with where the web will take me next.
I’m passionately interested in digital culture, not just from a personal point of view, but professionally. It could be considered an interesting stretch to wish to extend a Theology degree into an MA but as someone who has spent significant time working in an active and contemporary church, and who is seeing how modern life has embraced digital culture I’m committed to appropriating new technology to keep our organization on the cutting edge of where technology takes us next. In the past, religious organizations have steered clear of new technology, fearing for their ‘mortal souls’ perhaps. It is my belief however, that ‘joining the discussion’ is critical to the dissemination and appropriation of new ideas and information, but equally important to maintaining our relevance to the post-modern generation of people with whom we connect.