Olanrewaju Balogun, a software developer and advert operations specialist
Hi everyone 👋🏾. This is my first blog.
I'm taking the bold first step into technical writing by writing about myself and how I got into tech. Read till the end. I'll be explaining how I became an ad-op specialist and a software developer at the same time in my journey.
Time travel to 10 years ago, I was a younger man who had just finished secondary or high school. I was desperately looking for admission into the university because that was the rave of the moment at the time - gaining admission.
Why am I talking about this? It is because it was at this time that I first got introduced to technical stuff. You see, my elder brother (whom we call Prof) at the time was a PC or computer systems engineer. And by that, I mean, he fixes laptops, mobile phones and computer desktops. Anything from hardware to software updates, operating system reload, name it. I was hooked.
Desktop publishing; my first ever computer course
I told my brother I wanted to start learning about computers. With my mom's help, I got into a boot camp where desktop publishing was taught. That's a fancy word for Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and basic computer appreciation or literacy. I remember fondly how I learned to type using the popular Mavis Beacon typing software. As you may have noted from the image above, Mavis Beacon did a great job of gamifying the learning process.
Soon, I could unbox, set up a computer set and even put together a presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint. I could run some data analysis using Excel and install software applications on my own.
BSc Sociology
Not long after, I gained admission into the University of Ilorin (Better by far). Sociology was my choice because I wanted to understand the world. I had lingering questions at the time such as; why do two people who once loved each other divorce? why do people commit suicide? hate crimes? poverty? etc.
Starting WordPress web development
I came back from school one day and I saw Prof building websites and making money from it. You see, he had committed himself to learning how to do so on his own to support the family. I started to take interest and he would show me how to buy a domain, install WordPress on it and start using PageBuilder to build user interfaces.
I joined him in a business he conceived which he named Proflinks Media & ICT. We built websites for schools, and e-commerce businesses and we did graphics design and printing. You can check out our IG page here 👈🏾. I learnt how to use CorelDraw for graphics design from him. Later we started using Photoshop. Fast forward, we started using Figma for user interface and user experience design.
"Can do" spirit
I think it was at this time that I developed the "can do" spirit i.e. I can do whatever I put my heart to do or put better, I can learn any technology or any process I commit myself to learning.
Digital Advert Operations (Google Ad Manager, Ad Sense & Programmatic Advertising)
I fell in love with digital ads at my first job after University with Punch Nigeria Limited, publisher of Punch Newspapers. What started as a freelance gig, managing social media content creation and campaigns morphed into a full-time role. I had the opportunity to redefine myself and rose through the ranks to become the Insight and Intelligence Lead working with data generated from many platforms and portals used by an online publishing powerhouse to ensure audience growth and revenue generation.
I soon started managing commercial partnerships with Google and other third-party vendors such as Amazon, DOT audiences, Pubmatic etc within the digital ads and programmatic monetisation space. I later became a Chief Analyst within the company. I have had the opportunity to work within different teams doing UI/UX design, programmatic ads operations, social media growth, partnerships, web SEO etc.
This was how I became an advert operations professional and I currently work within this industry in a leading global software company.
2020 lockdown, the start of my software or web programming and development
Because digital advertising lives on the web and on mobile applications, I set out to understand how the web works. I started learning web programming in 2018. I will do this in my leisure. Everyone who knew me at this stage of my life will remember seeing me with a PC all the time. Then came lockdown in 2020. I was fortunate to stumble upon Angela Yu's web development course on Udemy. I learnt the basics on my own, in my room with my head bent and focused on my PC. I soon became comfortable with frontend web development using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, SCSS and jQuery. I even got the basics of Reactjs. You can have a look at my Github profile and repos here 👈🏾. I also did some projects with Frontendmentor.io. Have a look here 👈🏾
In 2023, I enrolled myself on AltSchool (Backend Nodejs) in order to have a feel of a community and supervised learning. I made it through to last semester now. I will be writing all about the projects I've built, and what I've learned so far in digital advertising, web technology and full-stack web programming. Stay tuned.
Thank you for reading. Please follow me on Twitter via this link.
Cheers.