Which technical skills in 2015?

[Helen Gräwert]

Hi everyone,

I've been a member of this group for years but have mostly lurked as I have a lot more to learn from all of you than to contribute myself! After 18 months off to bring up my little boy, I'm dipping my toes back into the murky freelancing waters and am taking the chance to refresh or update my skills.

This covers anything related to web copywriting, including UX, accessibility and, of course, technical skills. There was a BRILLIANT discussion back in 2013 on the tech side, and I was wondering if there's anything new to add now we're a few years down the line in the development of the CS field?

My location also means I'm pretty much limited to online learning, so I'm looking at resources like udemy.com and codecademy.com (which was recommended in the 2013 thread). Are there any others you'd recommend, please? I'm also interested in any distance courses based in Spain (in Spanish) related to the CS field.

Big thanks in advance for any help and advice!

Helen

www.concisecontent.co.uk

[Melanie Seibert]

Hi Helen,

Lynda.com has an Information Architecture (essentially, card-sorting) course, and I believe a Content Strategy course as well.

Bentley University has a certificate program in UX, and you can take remote courses individually. http://www.bentley.edu/centers/user-experience-center/training/ux-certificate-program

Sorry, I don't know about Spanish-language programs. 

Good luck,

Melanie 

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[Sam Sunder]

Great question. And being a free lancer is definitely an admirable goal.  You have pointed to the obvious sites. I'd add another one like coursera.org. However, let's take a step back and decide what you want to do. At a high level, you can think of web development as  consisting of front end or backend. Now, let's refine this some more.

Front end can be again thought of as UI/UX folks. Or even content strategy folks. If you are into UI/UX you should take courses in that but then you want to be familiar with front end web development tools like css / html and javascript. If you want to content strategy then information design and being able to write are key skills. Here there are tools for email marketing and marketing automation. If you want to see what marketing automation can do for you so you can learn and decide if this is right for you, check check flexidot.

On the backend site, you can continue with things like javascript, or Ruby on rails or python.

The point I am trying to make you should map out where you want to be and then decide on a course to get there. Once you know the tools that you want to master, whether they are markting automation, email marketing, php or python or content development, you can find online or even free courses to get you there.

Hope this helps. Don't hesitate to email me if I can help more.