You are an expert! That’s what you hear from others when you have great and deep knowledge about something. People will turn to you to seek your advice or ask you for tips and help.
But you have not always been an expert! You learnt, you listened and followed others who are experts and you tried things for yourself and you probably have failed. Failure is a big part of learning and becoming an expert.
In short – everybody has been a beginner in an area at some point.
When I got started on setting up my home lab, I ran into a few issues and seeked for advice and tips by looking up the issues on the internet. I was lucky, I found a few blogs which covered the issues I was trying to solve. Those blogs I found are written by experts. People who have been in IT for years, who have a lot of experience and who share issues they had to help others to solve them. Because no one has to invent the wheel again because others are sharing their own experiences with the same or very similar issue and how they solved it. You can gain knowledge from others’ experiences.
But what I realized when looking up how to solve the issues is that most of the information given need more then just a basic knowledge and understanding of the subject. I had to google bits and pieces of the solution to be able to follow and specially to understand what some the instructions meant.
So there is an informational gap. Where are the basic information you need to become an expert, even a SME (subject matter expert)? Not all knowledge gained comes from years of experience and experience of life. Not everybody involved in IT has the option to take courses and then put the newly learnt knowledge to test and practice step-by-step. Some have to jump right into a new area of expertise. A lot people do it successfully while others fail or need much longer to get up to speed.
In one of my last jobs, I was told by my boss and other members of management that my main advantage compared to almost all of my colleagues was my experience of life. It was never meant negatively and I used the trust in me to work with my colleagues and help them – not entirely job related.
So, using my experience of life, I want to help to close the informational gap. When I am going to write new posts, I want to make sure that people new to that specific subject can get the most out of the posts – going from introduction posts to deep dive posts. That I way, I am learning, too. And hey, I am still new at subjects, too. I think of myself as a lifelong learner and I want to share that motivation with those who come across my blog.
