The other day I added up the time I spend on volunteer work, you know, contributing back to the community and the like.
I used to see this as just an hour here, and hour there, no big deal. I just consider it to be part of what I do.
However when I added it all up and came up with a yearly average. It was a bit of a shock.
The amount of time I spend volunteering is a little over an hour for every workday. It’s around 240 hours annually.
Over the last few years I have really come to question the point of various web industry professional associations.
Yes, it’s all about member benefits, relevancy, and value for money. What I also look for is the chances to network, face to face or online, ways to enhance my professional development (offline and online). Also the validation that you are following industry best practice as well.
Still the most important requirement is a sense of community and belonging.
Where does the the web industry fit in the world. You would think that after 15 plus years that we would have worked that out by now and found our place. But alas this isn’t the case. I still ponder what category should we sit under in a corporate or business structure, let alone what role we should all be.
Something that really frustrates me, is when you go to fill in a survey and they list off the industry types. I’m always very confused where do I put myself, my business. Which one of the categories do I choose.
Gary Barber
I’m an independent User Experience Consultant.
I design interfaces, build information architectures, prototypes, do UX research and conducting usability & accessibility tests and audits.
I can work within your existing team or as an external consultant on a contract or adhoc basis.
You can contact me via my company, radharc.
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