With all the discussion, earlier in the month, on the way the W3C working groups are made up and operate, the influence of the browser and software producers on the web industry. We really have to consider do we have this around the right way. There has been calls for removal of the software producers from the working groups. Now I’m not going to debate that topic here, I think we have all done this to death at the moment.

It’s back on the cards again, or maybe it never really went away. The need for certification of professionals in the web industry as a measurement that they are in fact compliant with using web standards in all there various variations of implementations. Late 2006 it was on the table, remember Mark Boulton had a go, and Richard Rutter had to comment on that, as you do. Well now PPK has put it all back on to the table with his proposal for the Guild of Front-End Programmers. There are some good points raised, but in the most part people are getting stuck on the detail, the micro level of the scheme, when there seems to be little concern for the macro level.

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.