Nick, meet Squared Online. Squared Online, meet Nick.

As much as I love digital, there’s one cold, hard fact that I cannot escape, that I’m a little embarrassed about: I don’t know digital. See, I love everything that the likes of the Silicon Roundabout produce – I can appreciate the end results (and unashamedly make use of them myself), but I have no idea how the geniuses that often inhabit Google Campus got there (figuratively speaking, of course). This isn’t to say I’m hoping Squared Online will teach me how to code or anything (this isn’t what the course is set out to do, nor do I particularly wish to be taught) but I at least don’t want to feel like such an outsider, like I’m pretending to be part of ‘their’ world without even the slightest bit of know-how to back my passion up.

I like my tech. I make out to journalists (let me finish) that products produced by the likes of Microsoft (who, it is rumoured, are soon to have a shiny new CEO) and Lenovo (who have just bought Motorola off Google for an absolute bargain) are the best thing to possibly happen to them (ever) as part of my job, and very much enjoy doing so. I’m even currently typing this soon-to-be blog post on my Surface 2 and in-your-face-blue Touch keyboard at Marylebone station looking very snazzy/wanky indeed. It was either going to be my Surface or my Chromebook, of which the latter brings up a very apt example of me being more a talker than a walker. My father (like most fathers, I imagine) is very precious about his desktop, to such an extent that he pretty well forbids me to be in its company, let alone look at it. I go on his computer to check my emails, he probably thinks I look at pornography while giving away all our savings to a friendly fellow from an unnamed African country getting in touch about our bank details. My Dad really ought to know better – I’m a man, of course I can’t multitask like that. But, nevertheless, his computer has become Ice Age slow. Of course I helpfully/smugly mention that my Chromebook will never get slow (or so Google tell me), prompting a discussion that perhaps he should invest in one. Both being men of the media, we soon discuss Microsoft’s recent Scroogled campaign, including Microsoft’s claims that a Chromebook is virtually useless without an internet connection. I explain that this simply isn’t true (Google fanboy alert), but it’s here where it all goes downhill. Not for Google, though – for me. My Dad asks me how it works and I simply have no answer. “It just does”, I say, and, for me, this simply isn’t good enough.

The signs are all there (or at least I hope they are) that I should really be immersing myself in digital marketing: I’m very much part of ‘Generation Y’ and the so-called ‘digital revolution’ (admittedly a little by default because of my age), I have the passion for tech, I have the passion for digital (I hope to post this piece on a new blog I read about in a The Next Web article I saved to Pocket, for God’s sake), I have the passion for, and all important foot into, communications (and will eventually, very eventually, have the knowledge to back it up) so, in my opinion, it’s about time I stopped talking the talk and started walking the walk. And, hopefully, that’s where Squared Online comes in. And how that excites me.