Day 69 - Been the "Tech" Person on a Project

Date: March 16th, 2010

I believe I mentioned this when I installed the cable at my parent's house a couple months back, but I am not technologically literate.  It may seem that way, but I manage my way around a computer the same way an illiterate person knows not to drive through a stop sign.  Its not the S-T-O-P that does it - its the bright red symbol of authority surrounding the word.

As for computers?  If its not in the help menu, the FAQ or the Google, its not within my expertise.  Well, even counting Google may be a stretch - there's a lot of stuff on the Google.  I'm serious.  A lot.  Of stuff.  In the meantime, I manage pretty well as long as what I'm doing doesn't involve C++, PERL, HTML, A/S/L, OMGWTFBBQ etc...

I'm pretty gosh darn decent with the Microsoft Office applications.  That being said, bragging about that would be like bragging about picking your nose.  Congrats.  Want a medal?  Fine, but wash your hands first.  As for me, I learned a few Excel, PowerPoint and Word tricks during my various stints as a corporate peon (which I, of course, mean in the best possible way).  So when our project came up and I have so much family stuff going on, I offered to do the PowerPoint (a decent chunk of the work) and opt out of some of the more intense research.

My group was happy to oblige - for the most part they had great ideas about what they wanted to research, whereas I hadn't thought about it yet.  So, I gathered all their stuff and compiled a nice, neat presentation with all the media embedded and the bells and whistles and whatnot that I know how to do.  I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty pleased with myself.  That being said, generally speaking, when I do something technical, it is quickly understood to be the basics package.

This wasn't the case here.  My group divided the work according to our strengths (which I thought was a fantastic way to do the project, quite frankly).  The reason everyone was ok with me doing the PowerPoint is that it was not anyone else's strength.  I found that out the day before the project - the embedded videos and pictures and whatnot were, well, more impressive than I expected them to be.

I realized as we were doing the project that my groupmates felt more comfortable with me being in charge of the functioning of the PowerPoint than them.  If something went wrong - I was the one who knew what was done and, theoretically how to fix it.  That was not something that I had experienced before - not with tech stuff, at least.  It was nice, but I also spent the whole class hoping nothing went wrong cause I honestly wouldn't have known what to do.  Then the mystique would've been gone.  And I enjoy the mystique.