I’m sitting here in a hotel, in Wellington, the day before some of the workshops start for Webstock. Which is a conference I have been iching to get to for some time.
Now conferences can be a fantastic events, they can be very stimulating mentallly and socially. You can gain a great deal of insight, new ideas and even an increased depth of professional understanding.
They can also be a complete waste of time. Which one they are is totally up to you. The organisers, can make the conference the best in the world, but the value aspect all comes down to the individual – you.
I have discussed Second Life previously. It’s the imersive 3D world by Linden Labs. It’s the type of online application that doesn’t really sit anywhere that can be categorised. With Second Life, I find you tend to visit, gain interest then leave, maybe you come back from time to time, maybe you don’t. Second Life does tend to have a high attrition rate (up to 85%).
If you haven’t heard it personally you will know someone how has:
I’m getting too old for this, but I hope I can finish this one last project/design before I’m forced out.
This is often from an extremely experienced coder/designer over 40. It’s an old problem. It goes back to the 1970’s even. But still today it’s present even in the web industry. But why? Are we valuing the perceived spirit of creativity, youth and cheap labour over experience too much?
A while ago I was involved in the selection of several people for positions with various organisations. Each organisation wanted to have the best person they could find for the dollars that they were willing to offer.
With this employment selection process I was hoping to find people with skills equal if not surpassing my own. The usual old chestnut; web standards based compliant design and development with unobtrusive JavaScript and maybe a bit a programming scripting skills. I’ve always assume my skill set was average, and not that much on the bleeding edge. I have since learnt this is not the case.
