Changing Technology and Why I Use Experts

The past few days have been swallowed up in literally changing technology. Leaving my Clam Chowder blog post as my last post wasn’t my plan but as you read on, you’ll realize why I had little time to try to blog.

I did wander around commenting on a few blogs, likeJason Alba’s  Worst Time Since  The Great Depression but otherwise I have been busy changing technology around. E-mails piled up more and I have a huge amount of filing to do.

As readers of this blog might already know, I hold two career roles, I am a professional resume writer and owner of Design Resumes (since 1983) and my business is contracted with Wausau Whitewater, where I hold the role of Operations Manager for the non-profit corporation that runs whitewater activities on the Wausau Whitewater course in downtown Wausau (since 1997). These roles often get intermingled and so does the technology that drives them.

In the early years with Wausau Whitewater, I owned all of the computers and the software. I bought my last PC in 2002 and have been making it work since then. Wausau Whitewater has provided me with a laptop that I was using heavily both in my office and on the river. I waffled about buying a new laptop for me and couldn’t see how I could use two in my office.

As my friend, TJ said, “it isn’t like you are Julie with Design Resumes from 8 to noon and Julie from Wausau Whitewater from noon to 5.” He’s right, it’s more like I am both sides all day long from when I get up at about 5am until I drop over at about 10pm or sooner. The Adobe CS4 software I needed to write Wausau Whitewater 2010 (the 60 page annual promo book) wouldn’t load on Wausau Whitewater’s laptop and Windows 7 wouldn’t load either.

Since it has been a tough year for Wausau Whitewater and I was due for a new computer anyway, I opted to buy my own laptop again but make sure it was built to run graphics-laden programs like Adobe InDesign, Bridge, PhotoShop, Dreamweaver, as well as Microsoft Office 2007 and QuickBooks.

I called Lucy Hoerter from PC Confusion Solutions to help me decide which laptop to buy to meet both my needs and Wausau Whitewater’s. We reviewed specs from several companies and decided on the HP Elitebook 8530P. It arrived last week and Lucy came to help me install it and transfer programs and files on Wednesday, which also happened to be the day that our long-needed carpet was being installed in the living room and dining room outside my family room office.

Getting technology and programs to talk to each other is no small task.

Though my resume files were always stored on the old 2002 PC, the Wausau Whitewater laptop was filled to the gills with programs and files. The printers both needed new drivers for Windows 7. Even after we established communication between the printers and the new laptop, trying to get my resumes which were still down on the older PC to print was difficult. A client I was working with experienced my frustration with me when we could revise his resume and print a copy or two but asking the printer to do full set, was more than it was willing to do.

I figured that opening the resumes on the laptop and then asking the printer to print the file that was in MS Word 2000 on the 2002 PC was just more than it wanted to do. I apologized to the client and told him I would call as soon as I resolved the problem.

I figured out that using my external drive (My Book) to copy all the files down there and then come up and put them on my new laptop was going to solve the problem. The downstairs transfer took an hour (there are literally thousands of resume and other client files) but the installation upstairs was less than 5 minutes. I used the same process with all the Wausau Whitewater files so that I can work on everything on one laptop.

I suspect it will be at least a week or maybe several before I get to the point where I have conquered the learning curve of new software, established that all the files I need are on this laptop, and can be in a more normal work routine. I suspect that I will be calling Lucy to help me tweak things yet and if Dreamweaver doesn’t cooperation, I will give a shout out to  TJ (IcreaTech.com) to coach me through how to get those files to cooperate. If I mess up my blog formatting, I have Kim Woodbridge, my WordPress Consultant to turn to.

I believe in networking, building alliances, and keeping contact with people whose services do or could meet my needs. I am grateful that I have connections to almost every one I could possibly need in the way of an expert and when I don’t, I ask my connections for recommendations. Do you have a network of experts to turn to? And if not, why not? Is it time to start building your network?