There was a time in my life when I aspired for expertise and the notoriety that came along with it. Early on in my career, I read lots of books about best practices (whatever that term means); I attended professional development workshops led by marketing experts who shared tips, techniques and best practices (there’s that term again); and I worked tirelessly toward developing a knowledge base I hoped one day would lead others to describe me as an expert in my field.

As I look back, these goals were extremely misguided. My efforts payed off, though, and the phone started ringing off the hook with invitations to speak about my work. I traveled far and wide to conferences and universities and meet-ups, waxing technological along my way to becoming a sharer of practices, best or otherwise.

This was all well and good until I realized what really made my work special and why people wanted to hear about it. Quite simply, I was not the expert people thought I was and the projects I created were not templated best-practices. Rather, they were playful experiments that valued humans over technology and meaningful connections over metrics.

In the early days of participatory and/or social media, there were no experts (and I would argue there still aren’t). We were all flying by the seats of our pants in an exciting, reckless and lawless wild west now known as the Internet. I was lucky to be one of a small group of rogue non-profit technologists who formed a kind of professional collective, regularly swapping war stories about projects that worked out well, in addition to projects that ultimately crashed and burned. This neo-collaborative environment fostered a freedom to experiment in a space without limitations. It was extremely conducive to producing uniquely creative work.

We ignored marketing metrics and built initiatives that flew in the face of the newly emerging, self-inflicted gurus. On paper, the projects shouldn’t have been effective, but they were. We were operating in new territory — one that had no textbook, let alone textbook author.

Upon realizing I was no expert and the projects garnering most attention were essentially public experiments, I became extremely conflicted wearing the costume of an expert. Who was I to speak authoritatively about these emerging technologies?

Asking myself hard, inward looking questions caused my professional world-view to change overnight. I stopped accepting offers to speak about my projects, in favor of sharing my experiences with those who have specific questions. To this day, I’ll happily discuss my work with people who are interested or readers who email, but I will never again put myself in a situation that delineates between expert and non-expert. I’m happy to forever consider myself an experimenting amateur.

There is something to be said for approaching one’s work from the perspective of an amateur. They operate with curiosity, openness, and an undeniable aire of possibility. There are no limits to their creativity and ingenuity is engrained within them. Amateurs participate in activities for the simple joy of doing so, not for a paycheck. They ignore rules and are not intimidated by failure.

Just consider the progress that has emerged from ignoring rules and popular conventions. We would be without innovations like Post-It Notes, Corn Flakes, the Pace Maker, Penicillin and countless others were it not for free experimentation and happy accidents. I don’t place my work on the same pedestal that these developments stand upon, but I do feel the best projects are those that force us to adapt to new paradigms and think differently about our environment.

Experts, on the other hand, thrive on stable existence. They live inside convention, measurement, regulations and best practices. With respect to technology, experts believe their methodology is the stuff of authority — a prescription for replicated success — which is rarely the case and often times not.

I think it’s important to differentiate between a lack of expertise and a lack of desire for information. These could not be more different. While amateurs do not possess unparalleled expertise in a subject, their thirst for knowledge about the subject cannot be easily quenched. To an amateur, there is always something more to learn.

In my personal practice, I continue to employ an amateur approach. It’s why I hash out crazy ideas like this here on the site. It’s why I only work with partners who embrace this philosophy. It’s why I admire other people making crazy unique work in the space and invite them to be guests on the podcast each week. I want to know more. I want to grow as an artist. I want to soak it all in. While not an expert at anything, I am hungry for experimentation and greedy for the fantastic.

And that’s enough for me.