It’s all connected….
I have been doing a lot of volunteer work recently, ostensibly as a web developer. However, I have discovered that things rarely fall into a neat (S3!) bucket we place them into.
One surprise is how many websites use CMS. Two of the groups that I helped use WordPress, one used Squarespace and I set up another with Wix. While I learned HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap in school. In the “real” world, especially for the non-profit sector (and I suspect for small business as well), these skills are used in combination with a CMS. Wix is the easiest but least flexible, WordPress is the most intuitive, and Squarespace made me want to pull out my hair….
Another thing I noticed is an assumption that I also design websites, write content, and know SEO. The occasional random practice with Daily UI that I do is helpful, although I do not consider myself skilled in it. Thankfully, I do have some marketing chops, so I can write content and I know SEO. Again, the key is that these are not things that I anticipated.
It has also been a shift to volunteer in a completely non-legal capacity. I cannot turn off the legal part of my brain, but I have no lawyer-client relationship whatsoever with these entities and many don’t even know that I am a lawyer. So, I stick to my development tasks and leave the legal work to others.
The neat thing about being a polymath is that my brain zips back and forth without issue between thinking about web development, marketing, and almost automatically about law. The useful thing about being a polymath is that people often need help in many areas without realizing it, and I can help.
michdcode 