The story of how I developed my 7 internet hats also known as proficiencies

Over the last several decades, I have worn 7 different internet hats. What started out as q college student using a computer in lab to do research and send emails to where I am today a certified professional.  My journey has taken many turns along the way and as my skills have grown my abilty to help others has grown as well.

My 7 Internet hats

-1- the end user hat

The first of the 7 internet hats I wore and still do to this day is the one that the vast majority of the population currently wears was that of the end user.

By utilizing the internet for personal and professional  purposes I understand what users are looking for and am able to help my clients with their websites.

-2- the requirements gathering hat

As I went down the path of my professional journey, I wore the requirements gathering hat. This hat required sitting with clients and listening to what they wanted their website to do. I would make list of functions and features and help them prioritize these lists in order of importance.  This was done by asking questions and most importantly listening.

-3-  the documentation hat

This was my least favorite hat that I wore. It was documenting everything I learned from the client and create detailed documentation of what the client had told me.

-4- the quality assurance hat

My next steps along the journey was an exciting one as it was during the dot com boom.  I wore the quality assurance hat.  I would take the requirement documents that I or someone else had created, create test cases  and test site. I would test various browsers, operating systems and, different  screen resolutions. This was way before responsive web site were a thing.  I had my own little test lab set up with multiple computers and monitory.   It truly was fun.

-5- the project management hat

From testing websites I was given my first team to manage. I was managing multiple website quality assurance efforts at a time. The is was the age of the dot com. Lots of caffeine and  long hours went into making sure that site functioned per the clients request.

-6- the content management  hat

When I owned my own company I was responsible for every aspect of the website. I wore each of the hats along way but on a daily basis I focused on content management. I added products to our commerce site, updated pricing, photographed items, worked with graphic designer to create call to action buttons. During these years I learned a lot. These skills eventually morphed into website maintenance and most recently into building basic WordPress website.

-7- the digital marketing hat

My digital marketing hat is my newest. I realized that many of the skills I had learned along that I had learned through trial and error now needed to be fine tuned so I became a Google Certified Digital Marketer to bolster my skills to better assist my clients.   

The internet keeps evolving

The internet has changed a lot and continues to change on a daily basis.  One of the biggest changes to the internet is the exponential growth of internet users and how they access the web. Per Statista, the number of internet users worldwide grew from 1,203 millions in 2005 to 5,300 millions in 2022.  

Yet, an even bigger change that the average end user may or may not realize is the ease of adding content and building a website. At the beginning, web pages were coded using a type of code called HTML (hyper text markup language).

Though a relatively easy language, a person would still have to code a web page with code that looked similar to