As specialists we are often faced with an rapidly and ever changing world. It is not easy to learn about every new shiny piece of technology which is released, let alone staying up-to-date on the existing ones. For most people, technology is only – a bridge – to achieve a goal, the means to an end . For a very small percentage however, technology becomes an end goal on itself.
This small group we could call Tinkerers, people that love to play with a technology and will define a purpose for it on the go. Not leaving an opportunity untouched to dive into something completly new. This in stark contrast to the Users who will define a goal and then choose the appropriate technology to bridge the gap.
Trough my journey in life, I’ve always found myself drawn more to the Tinkerer. Discovering new technologies and finding a goal for. This can be anything – a programing language, a piece of software, machine learning – it doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it is technology. The best part about tinkering is that it gave me insight into other areas non technological areas as well. where for many business professionals, technology is a bridge to automating processes, for me at was a bridge to learning about business processes.
Though I find myself mostly drawn to having a very wide knowledge, there is also some merit in mastering a subject. For a tinkerer this has to be done with extreme care, as it deviates from his defacto view – technology being the end goal, No, a tinkerer needs something bigger for that than a view on things they need … a vision.
jack of all trades master of none
Elizabethan English
but better that than a master of one
It was on a cloudy afternoon in the early spring of 2012 that a seed for an idea started sprouting. Something equally beautiful as it is frightening – a long-term goal. the vision of building a bridge between technology and businesses slowly started to take shape.
Over the months that followed, this image became more refined and resulted in a clear direction I would need to take. The first step was attaining a higher Diploma in IT – a paper that stated that I am qualified to work with computers. 3 years flew by and I ended up with not only a degree and a lot of new knowledge, but also with a refined and much clearer version of my vision: I wanted to connect business users to their data so they can derive more value from it. Luckily their was already a subdivision within technology for this – Business Intelligence (BI). and off I went onto a journey into the professional world of BI.