"Community Responsibility" on Digital Web Magazine
First off, I want to show my support for “Stop Cyberbullying Day”, today, 30 March 2007.
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stopcyberbullying
Related to that, two days ago I posted a short “news” item on Digital Web with some of my thoughts on recent instances of the Internet’s “underbelly” rising up to shock the web-standards/blogger community. It took me a good long while to research and write, but I felt compelled to try to find some conclusions from the disparate events. Primarily, I wanted to look at the momentum added by the crappy events to the growing need to shape web-standard design/development into a solidly defined craft. During my research, I had the good fortune to chat with Kerri Hicks—an extremely talented fellow staff member at Digital Web—about the state of the industry. Kerri has a rich background and a very smart perspective about our industry, and its current state of waffling between what’s almost cults-of-personality and a real, defined industry.
The way I see it, we’re at a crossroads. Define it as a true discipline, like its sister industries, or risk leaving behind those of us who do web-standards web design/development in a corporate environment. To my perspective, the industry is led by the freelance/consultancy mentality—that’s the path to the comfort, good work and glory of web-standards. But considering the impact of the sub-group on the acceptance and business momentum for web-standards and progressive web ideas, the ignoring that segment seems dumb. But we do it, to some extent, in conference panel topics, blog posts, even articles in our community publications like Digital Web. How do we better address people on the fringes of web-standards at our conferences, events and in our day-to-day geek interactions?
I’m sure I’ll post more on this as the week and conversation continues.
