Google Turned 20, and my Professional Digital Transformation

Over the last 15 years, I have watched the internet grow up, Google turned 20 (Oh to be 20 again (maybe 21)) this past week (September 27, 1998 – September 27, 2018), in a way I feel like I’ve raised a child. I remember being in high school and having C prompt computers, a few MAC computers and getting on the internet for the first time in my computer class. I go off to college and we had huge computer labs; I remember waiting in line for a few min or possibly hours to access a computer. A few were doing homework, others were chatting, playing games, trying to figure out what exactly to do with the internet. For me, I knew how to use a Mac, so if all I needed was the internet the MAC computer lab was a good bet to be free. Funny to think that in 1999 that no one wanted a Mac and now 2018 Mac has raised the bar on computers and user experience.

2002, start a new job, “you’re good with computers” would you have any interest in learning HTML to help a co-worker code emails…and my love for HTML code took off. Of course, I said “YES, I’ll learn HTML!”, so I consumed all I could on HTML, I did every tutorial, took classes, learned from my co-worker and coded emails with all in line styles (which believe it or not in line style is still used today for email…thanks Microsoft for rendering in Word.)  Also to note, in 2001, I hand coded in note pad, Dreamweaver was around in 1997 , however it wasn’t used in my organization for coding until 2003 and for email it was easier to code by hand. I stayed with email until 2009.

2009 to current – I’ve been on my own professional digital transformation. In my career I have had exposure to ecommerce, data science, marketing automation, social media, content, SEO/SEM, affiliate marketing, blogging; if it was digital I tried to understand how it worked and integrated together to create a digital ecosystem.

Below is my digital ecosystem and how it works in my mind. I used a hoberman sphere to represent the inner-workings of how input from one digital marketing platform can impact the output of another digital marketing tatic or platform. For example, a social media post or email (input) driving traffic to an ecommerce promotion delivering a sale on the site and a tangible product to the customer (output).  Using all of these tools effectively is what creates an effective omni-channel experience.