https://medium.com/vizou/analog-digital-conversion-f0df203af29f

with a traditional design background who has been building websites since long before the days of WordPress, from before “blog” was a household word. As a coder and digital creator, I had to learn nearly everything on my own since there weren’t even computers in my university days. The big tech advance of my time was memory typewriters, which I doubt most folks under 40 have even heard of (IBM Selectric III, Wheelwriter). I keep reading great posts about women in tech by those much younger than me who will likely replace me in the wink of an eye if I don’t keep up. So here I am with a cup of coffee early on a Saturday morning, thinking on paper about how I got to where I am now – spending long days and too many nights coding, researching and configuring. All I can say is, thank God it’s true that you’re never too old to learn new tricks. I decided to write this article after attending the 2013 WordCamp in Montréal, where I participated in a session called Women In WordPress. A lively discussion about how some of us got to where we are in the tech world motivated me to document my own trip.

in Boston in the ‘80s, at the height of the tech boom in that region, I bought my first Macintosh, a 512 with a disc to boot it up. I created gorgeous little pixelated illustrations, experimented with HyperCard apps and typed and printed all my own media plans, proposals and letters on it, which greatly pissed off my boss at one job, who kept insisting that that was what secretaries were for. I kept telling him I was faster and more accurate than the secretary, and it was easier to make corrections (she used a memory typewriter). Today, that same man has learned how to type, uses a Mac, and once called me just to tell me that I had been right all along. Not long after, I paid $5,000 for a LaserWriter, borrowing the money from my Mom. I was lucky enough to work with a company that had us rubbing shoulders with the cream of the tech crop – Mitch Kapor, Dan Bricklin, the folks from Bistream, Mark of the Unicorn (now MOTU) and a slew of up-and-coming developers and companies who went on to change the digital world. Aldus’ Paul Brainard himself demonstrated the very first version of PageMaker while sitting on a desk in our offices! A series of Macs moved through my life over the next few years, as well as large-format monitors, including my favorite, a black-and-white, Radius model that could be pivoted from landscape to portrait mode – a telling precursor to the functionality of the iPod Touch and iPad. I think it must have cost somewhere around $2,500, a shocking sum at the time.