I am a support professional. I have been for most of my 30+ years working in IT. My job is to enable my customers to do their jobs, not tell them how to work or what they need to do their jobs. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly can function as a solutions provider, and I have, but when I hire a contractor to do some work in my home, I trust he has the skills and the knowledge to know what tools he wants to use to get his job done. It isn’t my place to tell him that he should use this tool or that for accomplishing the task at hand.

But supporting customers is at the heart of me. It’s what I enjoy and what I do well. I know my customers. I understand generally what they do and have a good idea of their work styles, so when they need something I can get them what they need because I’ve anticipated their need.

If I worked in hospitality, would be a concierge. A good concierge can have an incredible impact on the people they serve and I can too.

I know a lot of people who think of support roles like mine as entry level or who think I lack ambition because I’ve not gotten into networking or system administration which are often seen as the natural progression from support roles. I make a significant impact on my customers every day, and would miss them if I were not customer facing. And here’s the thing, I’ve been in those other roles. I’ve built servers and authored white papers for IBM, I’ve architected solutions when none existed, I’ve been that engineer on call at 2:00 AM when the mission critical piece of equipment fails, and in none of that do I find the satisfaction of being able to help someone complete a task that they need to complete.

So, if I’m entry level, or if I lack ambition let it be my customers who benefit from that. I’m right where I like to be.

I was looking through my LinkedIn feed this morning and saw a post that read:

The WordPress world needs less:

‘Web designers’ who call themselves web designers but are basically template editors

And more:

Skilled teams who understand how to build with WordPress efficiently

And while I agree completely that we need more skilled teams who understand how to build with WordPress efficiently (and other ways like fiscally responsibly), I’ve got to be honest, I was a little put off by the sentiment in this post. And, in the interest of full disclosure, I was put off by it because I am one of those ‘web designers’ who calls himself a web designer but is basically a template editor. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing necessarily.

In my reply to the post, I said:

I understand what you’re communicating here, but I don’t think it has to be either/or.

I often say there is room in my garage for a sports car, and a pickup. Each has their purpose. If I’m taking my wife out for a nice supper, she might not appreciate the truck. But if I’m hauling firewood, I’m going to have a miserable time in the sports car.

We absolutely teams who understand how to build efficiently. But I think it’s okay for guys like me to say I’m a designer. Because I am. I’m certain my skill level is nowhere near yours, but I DO design. For a long time before the term designer became fashionable, there were lots of guys at my skill level calling themselves web devs, which I think was far more misleading.

Perhaps one day I’ll be a real agency guy, but right now I’m just someone who REALLY enjoys WordPress and wants to learn and grow his skillset. But even at my skill level I have been able to help out four small businesses that wouldn’t be able to afford your services. My hope is that with my limited skillset and enjoyment of the platform their business can grow to the point that one day, I can pass them off to someone like you, then everybody wins.

The car truck analogy is one I’ve used for a long time and it really resonates with me. There are appropriate tools for every job. In some cases, there is more than one way to get the job done.

Not everyone who wants a steak is going to go to Oak Park and pay $110 for a 24 oz. bone-in ribeye, dry aged for 28 days, topped with chanterelle butter, bordelaise, and triple-cooked potatoes. More often than not, a $20 ribeye from Hy-Vee is just fine!

I’m not saying that nobody needs the level of service this poster provides. I mean NASA.gov is a WordPress site, and I can’t begin to get my mind around how complex that must have been! But there are people like Mike over at TheRightMovers.net and Tom at OnCallRestoration who don’t have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on websites. What they need (and want!) is a web presence for their small business. A brochure website. And that’s exactly the niche I want to be able to fill at SuttonDesignWorks.com while I hone my craft while I wait for retirement.

I’m certain the poster is extraordinarily skilled at his trade, but he was once a novice, and it seems a little like he’s forgetting where he came from.

I don’t make any bones about who I am or what I do. I do, in fact, design websites, and I’m sorry if that offends some people.

There are a few people I know who are in the path of this monster that’s roaring ashore on Florida’s gulf coast. My thoughts are of course, first and foremost, for their safety of that of their families. I’m also hopeful they experience minimal property loss or damage, so I’ll just put that out front there.

But I’m also a technologist, and a mobilist, and there’s a part of me that’s curious about how the infrastructure is going to fare down there as a couple of people I know down there build websites for a living, and I’m hopeful their clients don’t experience significant down time because of this storm.

How people interact with technology has always fascinated me. As we become increasingly dependent on technology, specifically our connectivity, that’s always made me think about being in places where I wouldn’t be able to connect if I wanted to. Perhaps that thought is at least partly responsible for me being a mobilist, and always wanting to be portable when I can.

In any event, the good people in the Sunshine State are in my heart and on my mind.

I asked Copilot to generate an image for me that depicted minimalism, and this is what it came up with.

AI is getting better almost daily, but I’m not quite 100% on board with it yet. I may explore that in other posts.

So I’m a mobilist, I’m into portability, I like to travel lightly, all of that encompasses minimalism.

Being a minimalist and a technologist means I try when I can to use things as much as I can the way they come out of the box. If I can avoid it I don’t care for 3rd party add-ons but just try to use things the way the designer intended them to be used.

This often requires some out of the box thinking. I look for solutions to things I need solutions for, but sometimes, when it’s going to be more of an effort to make the solution work the way I want it to, when I step back and get a wider view of the problem, it may be that what needs to change is my perception. Maybe I’m looking for a problem for the solution I have or want to put into place.

Sometimes I just need to back the car up and go down a different road where I encounter fewer things that require solutioning and can keep things simpler and more streamlined.

Simpler is usually better for me.

It’s September. And on my calendar, that’s Fall. I think of Fall as September, October and November. December, January, February I think of as Winter, March, April, and May are Spring in my mind, and then of course, June, July, and August are Summer. Yuck.

Anyway, with the newly on-line https://SuttonDesignWorks.com, SuttonsNest changes again, and for a final time (he says knocking on wood and crossing fingers) hopefully.

As I endeavor to separate the personal from the professional, a little bit, or at least draw better outlines (LOL), I’m starting to blog a little bit again. Or maybe on-line journaling may be better, because I don’t care for it to be interactive necessarily or allowing comments, but being something, someone could follow certainly.

So, https://SuttonDesignWorks.com will become the “professional” or outward facing website, while SuttonsNest will become more like a journal. A blog as it was originally intended to be all those years ago.