A Web Professionals Network?
So, I’m home sick today and I’ve been thinking about many of the conversations going around in our little Web community of late. Especially Jeff’s post about what it means to be a professional Web designer. In those conversations there’s been a bit of talk about starting up a professional association or something and if that happens I’d love to help out. However, I was just thinking of a less “official” yet possibly equally effective way to address the needs and problems we’re seeing. I’d like some thoughts on it if y’all have a sec.
What about a peer-run Web professionals network? Sort of like a simplified Linkedin, but targeted towards web professionals. I know there have been a few attempts at something like this (O’Reilly’s thing comes to mind) but nothing that seems to really fit well. I know, if it was done right, I’d be interested in it. It would have to be open, carry some weight by having some kind of well respected steering group or sponsorship, and have benefits to both new and seasoned Web professionals. It could be tied to one of our well read publications (Digital Web, Nick?) or something stand alone. I’m sure it would take quite a bit of work to get off the ground, but I’m sure there are talented folks willing to do it.
It’s just the seed of another idea to help address the needs of a growing medium and the people who are passionate about it. I don’t think any sort of “official regulation” or certification is going to help. If we can provide a way to better connect all Web professionals (which seem to me to be splintering off quite a bit lately) and provide them with education, mentoring, guidelines for conduct, etc. we may be able to raise the level of professionalism in our industry across the board.
I don’t know, maybe what I’m talking about is a professional association. I just worry that it might be too easy to game, take advantage of or be too exclusive (we already have some well established cliques in our industry, we don’t need another) to be useful. That’s kind of how I see the AIGA right now. They just don’t seem like a good fit for me and pretty much anyone can buy their stamp of approval. I’d rather something that’s free, open to anyone who obeys the rules, and uses peer moderation to weed out the people that aren’t supposed to be there.
Again, it’s just a thought. I’d be interested in knowing what other Web professionals thought about this idea. Am I crazy?
You are reading A Web Professionals Network?, posted October 04, 2006.
Comments
1 Joshua Lane said:
I think it’s a good idea. I was never all that interested in AIGA because the things they do just don’t seem to fit what I do. It would be nice to have some sort of professional organization to call my own.
I guess the question is… who has time to devote to figuring out and setting up such a thing?
2 .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) said:
Joshua—good question. It would probably need help from lots of folks as well as some strong leadership.
3 Walker Hamilton said:
Felix Geisendoerfer was just thinking the same thing (kinda)
4 Chris Kavinsky said:
I personally like the idea, but wonder how much it would address the issue being discussed of late. If you’re intending for something like that to bring the pros and “hacks” together, I’m skeptical it would make much of a difference. My impression is that the “hacks” or other non-professionals that attempt web design would either be uninterested, or completely unaware that something like that would exist. I may just be pessimistic, or too overloaded with work right now to think it through clearly. Responses?
5 .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) said:
At one point there was the Association of Internet Professionals which I was involved with. Associations are tricky as they can end up with a lot of needless politics. The idea behind the association was good- they were “certifying” course tracks at colleges and universities, really playing up the education angle, but in the end it cannibalized itself on engineering vs. design and other hot button issues that fuel debate amongst the many shades of “web professional”.
The benefits for joining were pretty good and though what you are talking about is slightly different, the potential pitfalls remain pretty much the same.
I was a board member for the Accreditation Council as well as on the technical committee, designed the seals used for approval and worked on the web site all on a volunteer basis. If a better, less bureaucratic association/“whatever you want to call it” was being formed I would likely volunteer my time again.
6 Tiff said:
One thing that’s kept me from joining professional organizations is that they don’t accommodate or group (or standardize) all the permutations of titles around the area of web design & development. It’s already confusing enough without a different professional network for each. My own job title’s gone from web designer to front-end implementer-monkey (I added the ‘monkey’ part) and back again. And if I look at my passive job search list, I follow feeds for 7+ different job titles: IA, UX, interaction designer, web des, web dev, front-end, web master, etc.
If a professional network could collect people with skills across all those disciplines and offer some guidance for which means what & when, the attraction would be very high. And it might do some serious good in helping potential employers find baselines for the position they hire.
7 .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) said:
Chris - That’s an issue that I think something like this might be able to avoid. Let’s face it, “hacks” aren’t going away. The idea here would be to provide education, guidelines, some loose legitimacy and good old fashioned peer pressure.
Joshua - I’m thinking something a bit less “official” than all that. Hopefully much less bureaucratic and self-moderating.
Tiff - Hmm, that’s a sticky problem, but I can see where your coming from. Something like this should provide a forum for those things, but I’m not sure it’d take it as far as some kind of “official” titles. Again, that’d probably be too rigid.
8 Matthew Anderson said:
AIGA is definitely more of a badge than a network these days. I think you’ve got a great idea on your hands, Keith.
Here is a question though. Without a ranking system, how would you use this hypothetical network to connect with people of a particular skill level? I tend to agree with Chris K slightly in that you’d probably want some amount of separation within the community based on skill. Here’s a thought…
What if part of the joining process involved an initial review by an expert panel? When you sign up the panel of experts reviews some of your work and assigns your skill levels in selected areas (e.g. HTML = 9, CSS = 8, Knowledge of W3 Standards = 7, ASP = 0). These skills get assigned to your profile and make it easier to find designers based on their skills and experience. Let’s say you worked on a project with someone in the network, improved your skills, and that user felt that you are actually a 6 with PHP, not a 5? Once you are in the system, other users can request that your skill level be increased or decreased (sort of like a LinkedIn endorsement).
Here are a couple of situations where I think this kind of system would be beneficial…
You just started learning CSS and you want to connect with a CSS guru for some guidance.
You are starting a secret project and you want to find a back-end developer that compliments your front-end skills at a similar level.
You are interested in starting a new event that will cover Accessibility - you want to bring in some fresh, new faces but they need to be experts.
9 Wade Winningham said:
What about Refresh? http://www.refreshingcities.org While there’s not an overriding governing organization (that I’m aware of at least) there are more and more cities joining together for local chapters.
10 Christopher Hawkins said:
“What if part of the joining process involved an initial review by an expert panel? When you sign up the panel of experts reviews some of your work and assigns your skill levels in selected areas (e.g. HTML = 9, CSS = 8, Knowledge of W3 Standards = 7, ASP = 0). “
I like the idea of ranking. But the problem with reviewing your work is that presumably you’ve learned more and more as the years go by. So, the farther back in time people review your work, the lower your averages get because those old projects are probably pretty bad. ;) Perhaps in keeping with the notion that you’re only as good as your last project, only your most recent work should be evaluated?
Also, what about the projects where your client demands that you do things you know are garbage? Let’s face it, we all get those sort of projects every once in a while, just to keep the bills paid. How do we tell the difference between “the client refused to pay the bill unless I used font tags because he doesn’t understand css and insists on updating the site himself because he’s a control-hungry freak” from “I used font tags because I learned HTML in 1997 and have never upgraded my skills”? I know a few web guys who use all the buzzwords when selling a new client, but then deliver 1998-era HTML because as long as it renders decently in the browser, the client can’t tell the difference. Not good.
There are probably a million ways to game a ranking system. If there were a good way to make it game-proof enough to satisfy the 80/20 rule (i.e. stopping the 20% of the members that would be doing 80% of the gaming), that would be awesome.
Look at me, I went and wrote a novel. :)
11 Tiff said:
I don’t think official ranking methods or titles would serve the diversity of the web design community all that well. But some alignment about titles, roles and what employers expect to hire (skill-wise) would do a lot toward helping designers market their skills. If a network arises from the recent rumblings, I would hope it takes some of the diversity of skills/titles into account. I’ll admit I have the idealistic notion that someday it would be nice for design to hold its own ground in business, based on history if not the individual.
Maybe an accurate distinction would be something like specialties. A designer could be a specialist in visual design (more graphics, less code), structural design (more code, less graphics), experience design (more usability & strategy, less code/graphics) and/or interactive design (flash or rich app design (?)). Those are just off the top of my head, and not the product of any real rigor at covering the industry, so please take them with a giant grain of salt.
I’d really like to hear opinions about ways to categorize design skills. I’ve never worked freelance or within an agency, so I typically think my perspective is skewed. Coming from a string of dot-com companies, sometimes I worked in multiple roles and sometimes I primarily focused on one small area of my general skill-set. Freelance or agency work seems to me to have a wider range of those inescapable proverbial “hats”.
12 Nathan Logan said:
I don’t think our community is responsible enough to handle granting or revoking someone’s official versus “hack” status. The best evidence for this seems to be the scathing rip that recently took place over on Airbag. The person in question may or may not be innocent, depending on who you listen to, but even after his apology, many still relegated him to the “hack” category. My point is not to continue that argument here - I could do that on my own blog if I so wished - but rather, to point out what I feel to be a common occurence in our field. Lots of bandwagon jumping and emotion.
I’ve seen (and in the past, taken part of) too many witch hunts to believe that the community as a whole has the collective discernment to grant or revoke someone’s “professional” status.
But I do like the idea of developing a set of tools, tests, best practices, etc. that our community, and those interested in our community, can refer to as the “industry standard.” Maybe even a “manifesto” of sorts that developers and designers can agree to and be associated with - it’d be nice to start establishing those and be able to point to them as the difference between the way “we” do things and the way “they” do things…
And pardon me for saying so here, but I dig the new design. A lot.
13 .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) said:
Nathan - I agree with you. I mean, I think it’s obvious that there was a problem with the whole Faulkner Wine rip and I think it’s ok to point it out, but it can really go to far. My feeling with this is to educate/advice/collaborate/connect not pick on people or point out when someone does something wrong. For it to work it needs to be open and people need to feel like they can belong, even if they’ve made a mistake…at the same time it’d be nice to have a place to air these issues and I wouldn’t want to make it so “touchy/feely” that you couldn’t call someone out for stealing, for example.
Again, it comes back to peer-style moderation, not any sort of government or anything.
Oh, and thanks for the compliment! I appreciate it.
14 Ryan said:
Personally, I would LOVE to have a place to learn and grow as my hopes to becoming a web professional get closer to reality. I’ve been doing my best to follow the rules (web standards), but there is still a lot I don’t know, and am more than willing to support.
I hope I don’t miss this if it actually turns into something real… I’ll be checking back regularly, and the feed is already added. Great thoughts on this, and I commend you for that in itself. People with this kind of mentality is who will help people like me become more of a professional, which only benefits everyone in the end. Thanks!
15 Destry Wion said:
Molly (molly.com) started a discussion about this sort of thing a while back. There were lots of good things to consider and plenty of follow-up comments. I think someone even launched a wiki in it’s favor. Might be worth following up with. Sorry, too tired to dig up the link at the moment as I’m about to log off; only read this article at the last minute as sleepy-sleep medicine.
My first reaction is similar to a concern someone mentioned already, I think (did I mention sleep); not paving the way for just another big Web dogs clique. Yawn. Frankly, I think peer evaluations will just lead to that. All the big dogs already have Carte Blanche access. So then what, they entertain themselves like senior fraternity/sorority greeks and run prostating wannabes through the ringer? No thanks. I think wannabes and self-respecting mortals alike (well, at least the self-respecting mortals) would prefer to try and hash it out with hard, solid work and determination on their own merit, and earn community respect that way. If they make it, like people actually can (and do), then they made it with a huge sense of accomplishment and gain a well-earned rep. If they don’t, well, they smoke happily on the mushroom somewhere and drift into comfortable oblivion. Natural selection at it’s best.
Let’s remember, there’s lots of ways to help earn your wings…public speaking (conferences), professional writing (books), and not the least of which is an effort at representing ones self as a mature adult in Web dialog (boy, this field suffers badly in that area). What’s the common denominator here? Good communication skills. Solid, solid, solid writing skills to say the least. Want to get to the top quicker? Learn to write better; that’s a good start.
I don’t know, the idea is worth tickling…why not? But I think it’s too soon in the grand scheme of things for more than just tickling right now. Something like this just doesn’t feel right yet. But who am I, I’m on the mushroom, and happy.
16 Jason Stirk said:
Keith, perhaps Australia’s Port80 association might be something like what you are looking for.
It’s pretty informal, but there are plenty of opportunities for folks (ranging from “hacks” to the adept) to ask questions, and plenty of opportunities for the veterans to pass on their hard earned knowledge. Peer pressure is always a great way to encourage people to keep their skills sharp! Oh, and it’s a good excuse to go out with similarly geeky and smart folks and have a refreshing beverage of your choice.
The biggest problem that I see with some sort of accreditation process is not only building the support structure to do the certification, but in getting that certification actually acknowledged by governments and industry. Even on a local/country wide basis, that’s some serious hard work there.
Without that, any accreditation would just be fluff. It’s all well and good saying “RandomWebAssociation gives my CSS skills the ranking of ‘Ninja’”, but if it doesn’t equate to anything people care about (for example, a recognized Diploma of some kind) then it’s effectively worthless in my opinion.
17 pauldwaite said:
> “When you sign up the panel of experts reviews some of your work and assigns your skill levels in selected areas”
I’ve absolutely no experience of this sort of this, but that sounds like too much work to be practicable, in addition to the other good criticisms raised above.
I’m not entirely clear on what an association would be trying to achieve. Are we talking:
1. Provide some level of evaluation of web professionals, so that clients and colleagues can feel confident hiring/working with them.
2. Network web professionals (WPs), so that WPs can contact other WPs to learn from them.
I suspect I’m probably missing something here, but I reckon a dash of microformats, and a site spidering blogs for them, could do it. You’ve got XFN to describe professional relationships (maybe add another professional value beyond colleague to describe a trusted or respected colleague, or just assumed that if a colleague is linked, they’re trusted), and hReview/vote-links to point to resources (e.g. a damn fine CSS article) to help new WPs.
The site spidering this information could then rank folks and resources Google-style, and maybe allow people to skip from one WP to another, via the people they rate.
I’m not sure how such a system would allow people to indicate which skills they/others have.
If someone rilly clever wrote the spidering site, this approach might be less work in the long run: or rather, some of the work would be distributed across the community.
18 .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) said:
Paul—It’s closer to #2. However, let’s not think of this as needing a technical only solution. It’s more than that. To be honest we as a community already spend too much time trying to throw technology at our problems. You’re right when you say it’d be a lot of work; both on the technical side and the non-technical side. IMHO the non-tech side of this is more important. Gettting the right people in place to plan it out and then sheparding it along to success and maintaining it.
It may be unrealistic, though, you’ve right with that.
19 .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) said:
I agree with what you just said Keith, and was part of the underlying point of my previous post (though not clearly stated). What will truly create what it is you are describing and many web professionals are looking for, is paying less attention to the technical structure and more attention to the social underpinnings and how we can leverage the culture surrounding our profession to create something rewarding that promotes growth, human connectivity and the advancement of our skills/industry.
20 pauldwaite said:
You’re quite right, evaluation and mentoring rely on people.
I was thinking that a little technology could reduce the ongoing people effort (more so for evaluation than for mentoring), thus making the endeavour more feasible. But yeah, without the people there in the first place, all is for nought.
21 Jason said:
I was thinking a similar thought the other day when I read the post Scab over on Greg Storey’s site.
If there was a professional network of web designers/developers and they all chipped in a few bucks a month for membership dues, a portion of those fees could be used for legal fees to go after pirated sites.
22 Wade Winningham said:
It’s starting to sound like a web professional’s version of the International Game Developers Association.
23 .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) said:
anyone remember the IWA or the HWG? similar, but they had to find a way to make money, so now they are training organizations.
24 dan said:
Something kinda like this has started recently in New Zealand (Web Developers Association of New Zealand), but I don’t feel like it’s got the right focus.
I think it’s closer to Paul’s purpose (1.) as above.
And there isn’t a ‘free’ membership option. Not that NZ$45 is really expensive, but if it were to serve more as a community than an association, then I guess free would be more doable.
Lets do it, I say.
25 Ryan Brooks said:
I know there’s a couple that have tried this, as you’ve said. A while back I was involved in building a community site for creative and technical professionals (http://www.defrost.ca/) as well as a new (as far as I can gather) project over at http://mintpages.net/
I think the problem with a project like this is it is most easily created over the web, therein becoming a big issue - with the number of sites online nowadays, it’s increasingly difficult to see the forest through the trees.
I’d be most interested, however, in hearing what issues and problems you think such an undertaking would address/solve? The technology issues I’m certain are the least of your concerns?
26 .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) said:
Web designers are not qualified to develop websites- too little is taught about information architecture, interaction design. it is not only design principles but usability and so on.
27 Brian Duchek said:
This is something I would definately get behind. I’ve been teetering on the verge of joining one org or another for months now, and something has always been holding me back. It’s usually some unclear value proposition, or too heavy a weight on the “Join us for our seminars!” angle. Seminars are good, but often cost more and are leveled for more junior career members or designed as intros to new technologies.
I’m way more interested in professional meetups, networking, tip-sharing, and accreditation (peer-reviewed or otherwise).