Samia Khan has six weeks to become tech-savvy. What that means….well, I’ll get back to you in 6 weeks once I figure that out.
Here’s the story:
As I write this on 2.21.09, I’m six weeks shy of my 24th birthday. Call it an epiphany, maybe a quarter-life crisis… regardless, I’ve realized I’m SO behind the times.
I joined Twitter yesterday because I needed to ask celebs about it at an event, and while on the site, I realized I was so not in the know when it came to all this tech stuff… My peers were all about blogs, twitter, etc. and I was sorta not up in it… all really did online was Gmail and Facebook.
That’s when the quarter-life crisis hit. This next sentence sums it up best… “OMG, I don’t know anything about technology, and if the future relies on the internet and understanding it, will I have no future?! Isn’t this what sets my generation apart from the baby-boomers? What service do I offer employers if I don’t blog, don’t understand what it means to ‘tweet,’ and are not using the internet as a means of distributing information?! Crap, I need to learn now!”
So here I am. The goal? Well first off, update the blog regularly with posts that outline what I’m doing to become, well as I’ve titled it, a Geek in 6 Weeks.
The ultimate goal? Start my own website (This blog doesn’t count.)
All help is appreciated…and encouraged. If you have advice, post it. I’ll probably use it, and give you credit in my post.
this is an awesome idea! I’m really interested in seeing how this goes for you. Good luck and don’t get discouraged by the confusion of a lot of this techy stuff (most of which I don’t understand either). Just push through the frustration, because we’re cheering you on.
Hey Samia,
this is quite a worthy goal, and I have thought about my own internet strategy quite a bit myself. I think that one of the keys to establishing a strong online following is to use the new online tech. Some of the things you should consider doing if you are serious about your goals are:
1) Build yourself a Wikipedia entry; this could be a fun project that you could enlist your friends to help you compose, and it could help you learn how to attach links to stories on topics that you report on in your journalism. So for an example, if you did a story on Neil Strauss, you could add a link to your story on his wikipedia entry.
2)You could use Flickr.com and create a profile that you would link to your blogs. So if you are out about town and see something interesting, like street art or weird fashion experiments, you could snap a quick pick and post it online.
3) You could also learn some of the different slide show programs, of flash. There is Slide.com, and this other one I can’t recall the name of quite yet. This way you could do a more visual thing and put some narration and audio interviews over your pictures. It is a tool that would set you apart if you get creative.
Well, that’s all the tips I can give tonight, I hope your project goes well.
Laters,
-A—-