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.

You know the ones. You end up looking at the choices like, Information Technology, Communications, Marketing, Business Services or something completely different. Still you look and think. Often I have just given up and skipped the survey entirely due to this question alone.

Anyone that has discussed the web industry with me knows I’m passionate about it. They also know that I’m extremely vocal on discussing where it sits in the business world.

We are Not Information Technology

It’s an issue, some of us have come out of the design industry, some from and IT background. I know in the early days the web was often controlled by a single enthusiastic individual who came from one of these areas, if they were lucky they came from both or maybe none.

I know that there is a very strong argument to say that it’s all IT based due to the programming skills required for the developmental side of the work. I disagree – strongly .

It’s not a cut and dry issue, but I’m of the belief that we have moved on from the text editor, programming centric days of web site development.

Yes granted that web development is still a large segment of the process. Still we have progressed away from the IT Department.  Just because we use computers to construct and document the planning for a web site, doesn’t mean it has anything to do with IT.

For example, I would end up categorising a industrial designer or an architect into IT. if that was the case as they both use computers and even do  a little scripting too

Besides in some organisations there are more programmers in the engineering section than the IT section. Maybe it should be in Engineering then?

If Not IT, then Where?

Let’s have a look at the processes used to develop a web site and the type of branches in a typical organisation that could supply skills to complete the process:

• User Research: Marketing and Public Relations
• Business Analysis: Engineering or IT
• Information Architecture: Information or Records Management
• Site Interface Design: Interface Design from Engineering
• Graphical Design: Design team from Marketing or Public Relations
• Branding Experience: Marketing
• Usability Testing: Marketing and Public Relations
• Development: Engineering or IT
• User Acceptance Testing : Engineering or IT
• Copy writing: Marketing and Public Relations

With all that IT and Marketing input this reminded me of the old Designers verses Developers debate.

Now I know that this does run into the age old adage – “It depends”. Yes, true it does depend on the project. The smaller projects will use more of the Marketing branch resources and the larger ones will use more developmental (Engineering or IT) focused resources.

Still if you look at all the processes and techniques that we use and where we have borrowed them from, you can see than the web industry is maturing, moving away from  IT and seeking  input outside it’s usual sphere of influences.

Here is a list of the areas that have influence web site production from tools, techniques to processes and procedures:

• Records Management
• Library Science
• Animation
• Industrial design
• Cinematography
• Engineering
• Information Technology
• Graphic Design
• Public Relations
• Brand Marketing
• Marketing Research
• Environmental Planning
• Interior Design
• Software Engineering
• Psychology
• Film Direction
• Cartooning
• Architecture

Sure, the list is a little biased toward influences of User Experience design techniques. Hey it’s what I do.   Still if we consider these fields that have a shared skill, maybe the Web Industry just needs to go in a new category called the Interactive Industry, and walk proud as a new communications industry.

What do you think, time to walk away from the old IT industry label.

I’ll tell you a story.

We have been working with a development company, who support a various range of their own products. Products that one of our clients use.   Straight forward, when we have issues with their product we email their support line. The other day we discover that the client’s site was down, we trace the issue back to badly written script injection hack. Easy to fix.

This doesn’t normally happen often, but it does occur from time to time. Usually it’s a attack on the hosts server.

So immediately I began the process of isolating the cleaning the site.  No major issue.  Having daily backups of all our clients sites does help.

When the site was operational and all passwords have been changed I began the process of determine how this all happened.   Seems a vendor support password had been activated once a few hours before and a file uploaded then deleted.  Same time the site failed.

I contact the said support vendor.   Only when presented with evidence of the compromised systems (via the FTP and PHP log)  did they admit to the issue.   No assurance of the issue not happening again, no statement that they have changed their security procedures.  At least they said sorry, cold comfort really.

Now as a support company surely they have an obligation, if only from an ethical view point to inform their clients that their passwords have been compromised as soon as they are aware of the issue.  This would at least allow their client to vigilant and reset  any system passwords or the like.

It appears in this case, that the client (my client) was on their own, we have to discover the issue and work it out for ourselves.  Despite the fact that the issue is clearly their fault.   I know there are legal issues here, but putting those aside, there is the moral issue as well.

Trust and Obligation

If you consider that we have an extreme sense of trust with our clients.  After all we have a guardianship to look after their web.   We can control their information resources, the presentation and branding for their organisation online.   There is a distinct duty of care that we have with each client.

Besides the various legislative requirements of the privacy and client information, do we have an ethical obligation to look after a clients data?  Should we tell them when things go wrong that are under our control?   Should we be 100% honest with our clients and work  with them all the time.   Or should we just deliver our service and leave it at that.   Should we just play the deny everything game, until we are presented with evidence in an effort avoid any legal implications.

It may seem like a clear issue.

However, if you don’t tell your client,  this gives your  client the impression that you are just in it for  the money and aren’t interested in them in the longer term.  On the flip side  if you do tell your client of the issue they may perceive you as incompetent, in that you let it happen in the first place.  In a way your are damned both ways.

Still personally I have found that being 100% and up front is the way to go.   Clients will respect you for this.

Other Issues of Ethics.

Our industry is just full of moral choices.  Not just this duty of care and information guardianship.

As a User Experience Designer I know that I can use my skills to leverage the psychology of  design and in fact I can influence customers, leading or tempting them to buy goods that they  don’t really need.   Now just because I can do this, does that mean I should.  I can make a lot more money doing this, should I?

This also extends to what industries you will work with.   From my view I don’t work with the gambling industry, religious groups and businesses that use high pressure sales tactics at any cost.

It could be said that we just have to provide our services and that’s it.  All this duty of care  and information guardianship is just a load of rubbish.  It’s not like it’s in the contract or written anywhere.

This is true, to a degree.  Maybe an industry code of conduct wouldn’t go a miss for our industry.  Mind you I have yet to see any of the fledgling web industry associations move in that direction.

Still till that happens, we all have to make our own personal choices on these issues.

The burning question is what would have you done in the case above, not told your clients?   Also where do you draw the line, what type of work would you not take on?

The Web is wonderful it’s full of all this content, all this information. It’s a copy writer or blogger’s dream. You just don’t have to do any work at all. It’s all laid out there for you, all you have to do is find it and take it.

Maybe just write a small introductory paragraph and then simply cut and paste the rest of the article you have found and publish. Easy!

Oh isn’t the web great. It allows such theft of someone else’s work. It’s fine to do isn’t it as the poor suckers put the information online so we could steal it… NO STOP IT!

Now I know we have various scrapers and SEO blackhats that just love to steal real content of the legitimate source. It’s a problem we all deal with on a daily basis. Then you get the various slack web site owners, gutter bloggers or copy writers that insist on copying content word for word.

Professional Bloggers Go Bad

You would think that this wouldn’t be happening in the world of the professional blogging. Yes the people that get paid to write and research original content. Surely they wouldn’t be just cut and pasting. Surely they have ethics. Surely they are not bringing the entire professional blogging community down.

Well this week I ran into a major incident from a group of people promoting themselves as professional bloggers that are knowingly stealing content. We don’t have one or two instances here, but a stunning amount, all attributed to a professional who didn’t write them. It’s not like these people are new to the industry, they come from an established professional culture where copyright is a constant issue.

It’s an interesting fact that these professional bloggers should be aware that they are now liable (I would assume, usually legal disclaimer) to pay the original author royalty payments. I would normally name names here and shame them, but I have been asked to remain silent on who and where as the issue is dealt with.

The Right Thing to do

Now I just shouldn’t have to say this.

When you are looking for content for your blog or web site don’t copy it from elsewhere. Fine you can quote sections. That’s sections like a sentences, a paragraph or two, make sure you attribute the source, not the entire article. It’s acceptable to get inspiration from the content, or summarise it. But don’t copy it. It’s against the law. Go have a look at Meg Tsiamis’ Copyright and Plagiarism on Blogs.

Don’t go saying it’s okay under the terms of fair use as blogging is just news reporting. We are not talking about a part of an article here, but the entire article word for word.

Stop It!

Remember we still have the Australian Copyright Act (and others elsewhere), in which once it is published it is automatically copyrighted, copyright notice or not. If you’re a little unsure on this please go read up on it at the Australian Attorney-General’s Department.

What about creative commons, isn’t that just an open licence to reuse it as you like. Well no, go read up on creative commons there is a range of licences. Creative Commons basically:

….provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from “All Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved.”

This still doesn’t give someone the right to resell and rip the author off completely.

So what would you do with these professional bloggers that are getting paid to steal other peoples content and resell it as their own.

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.

Change it or not

However I think it’s time that the professional and semi-professional associations that represent the web industry in terms of implementers (designers and developers) should start to leverage their members around the world and join forces to join (lobby) the W3C and stop relying on invited experts to put their case.

At present the W3C is receiving membership (lobbyists) from anyone that can afford it. This is mostly software developers. The ground level of the Industry is only really represented by the invited experts on the various working groups. These positions are usually on a goodwill (unpaid) basis. These people being very talented and articulate communicators in their fields.

But at the end of the day they are not primarily lobbyists by profession they are designers and developers. Their time is dedicated to their jobs and businesses not lobbying for the web industry.

We bitch about web standards, we complain about lack of government understanding or our profession. But where are our lobbyists in this arena. Well we don’t have any! Sure there are the other professional computer or Internet industry lobbyists, but these are not primarily focused on  the web industry. They tend to cater for the needs of IT managers and the ISP industry respectively.

What about WaSP you say. Again it’s made up of volunteers. I’m not saying scrap WaSP, or the current W3C working group structure, but that we need to channel the effort through a group of key paid professional lobbyists as well as the current efforts. And again both these groups aren’t  going to help in the area of government lobbying. We have to meet the other industries face to face in the same arena.

Stepping it up

It’s time that the industry as a whole stepped up. To put the views of its web professionals on the table. The best way we can do this is get into the W3C as members (lobbyist) and also lobby government directly.

Now this is not going to require a lot of ground level organisation. All that’s going to be needed is the support (financial is good if possible) of a core lobby group (foundation) to represent the web industry.

There are hundreds of professional web industry associations around the world, such as AWIA and WIPA, for example. Now we don’t have to get them to merge together at all. They all serve their defined local purpose. But they all can’t afford to employ a lobbyist to lobby any level of government let alone bodies such as the W3C. So what is so wrong with a centralised foundation supported by the web professional associations to employ said lobbyists? Each association contributes what it can to the foundation.

Other professional industries are doing it, why not the web industry.

What can we do? Well doing nothing is the worst thing. Even if you don’t agree, discussion is good, blog about it, podcast about it, discuss it on Seesmic. Join your local web professional association, talk to their committee about it. Shout it from the roof tops. Email others, Twitter about it or write forum posts about it.

Time has come for a little more action and not just words. We all need to get out there in some small way and help our web communities.

Just get the idea out there. The industry needs to grow up. We need professional lobbyists.

Why Have Certification

I can understand the benefits of such a scheme as this, where it be for general web industry practice or something specific such as front end design or development. It will help in bringing a degree of professionalism and allow the people that are complying with web standards to at least benefit from their efforts in maintaining a degree of professionalism. For students it allows for a professional path after study and a clear source of mentoring. For clients/employers it allows for degree of satisfaction that these people have the required skills and knowledge base. But I’m sure we have all heard these motherhood statements before in one form or another from our local designer or computing professional organisations.

The one thing is will help with, I feel, is to remove the cowboys from the industry. For a while there they had all slinked back into their respective holes, but sadly with the current boom times they are back. Yes we are the glamour industry again, or maybe we never really stopped being the glamour industry. But the cowboys are back.

The Problems with Certification

Young Industry

The industry is young, we are all really just still finding our feet, yes it moves at lightning speed at times. But at the end of the day its is all about people, not technology. Any certification scheme needs to be produced by people and have people involved with the testing.

Resources

Unless your are doing the scheme with paid members or making people pay for certification you are going to need to have volunteers working on it. More often than not your are going to have to have people with an education background in the mix as well. Now these schemes usually start off with a blast of enthusiasm from the respective volunteers that will wain over time and the zest for the scheme will die as the champions loose interest or turn to politically squabbling.

If however people are paying for the scheme, then yes you can pay for resources. Yes people will put more value on it, time wise and funding wise. Hey if it’s costing me money I for one am going to ensure I complete it and at least try and use the skills learn. Now the problem is if it is going to cost it has to be good, and Industry/Business community support, with wide spread use. And if you want it to be good, you need the industry to embrace it and take it up. Yes, it’s a double edged sword.

Existing Professionals

But you also need to consider the practicing professional,who frankly could walk in and pass certification easily. They may begrudge the cost in time and money to become certified as they already have all the skills and are doing just fine. In reality it is these senior industry people you want to embrace your certification process.

Regionalisation

Course there is another problem that has to be overcome, the current fracturing of the Web Industry into various regional camps. Effective certification schemes only usually work well with any type of professional standard if they have the backing of local tertiary education institutions. This mean usual face to face contact and examination. Mind you this I feel is about to change.

Industry Moves Too Fast

The industry moves too fast, get a scheme in place and within months we are working with a new technology that is not covered by the scheme at all. Educational institutions are just drowning in the paperwork in order to keep two years behind us.

The Reality

The reality of any certification scheme is you have to meet a number of critical milestones as I see it:

• Ensure that the scheme adds value, but isn’t too easy or hard to obtain certification.
• Ensure that the scheme stays up to date with current trends and industry best practice.
• Get members or associates to take up the certification scheme.
• Ensure that clients and employees understand what the scheme means and support the scheme, even demand it. (This is the critical one, without this why bother at all)

Sure there are some vendor specific schemes around. We have Microsoft with the Microsoft Certified Professionals program, producing the MCPD: Web Developer and then there is Adobe with their Adobe Certified Expert to Associate schemes. But these are really, as you would expect, just product certification schemes. Then there is the World Organization of Webmasters (boy do I hate that term – webmaster), which many people have claimed is vendor neutral. I do have some misgivings personally about organisation such as WOW, especially in their terminology, I have been working the web since 1995 and I’m an apprentice, sorry that sucks.

Interestingly we have seen organisations try time and time again to get traction in the certification marketplace. As you would expect some have maintained a moderate level of success. White other have just fail; well not so much as fail, but some I would say have lost their way or seem to have not really looked at current industry best practice. This allegedly is mainly due to the lack of quality volunteers within these organisations or the attempts to full commercialise the process.

So should the certification process be attempted by educational institutions or Web Professional Organisations. Or as I see it with a partnership between the two, ad if you where to attempt this is it possible or are the problems outlined above just to large to overcome. Before we even look at this you have to know who the players are:

Certification / Training Organisations

• World Organization of Webmasters
• Certified Internet Web Professional Program (CIW)
• HTML Writers Guild / International Webmasters Association

Professional Associations

Global

• Web Standards Group
• Internet Professional Publishers Association
• WWW Chamber Of Commerce (Non operational)
• Web Producers Organization
• International Council of Online Professionals (iCop)
• Guild of Accessible Web Designers
• International Association of WebMasters and Designers

Regional

• Web Industry Professionals Association (Australia)
• Australian Web Industry Association (Australia)
• New Mexico Internet Professionals Association (USA)
• Colorado Springs Association of Internet Professionals (USA) – disbanding
• American Association of Webmasters (USA)
• Content Management Professionals (USA)
• UK Web Design Association (UK)
• Russian Webmasters Association (Russia)

As you can expect I will have missed some organisations, please feel free to add them below. I get the impression that in reality our Web Industry is really made up of hundreds of minor professional groups. Some of these organisations I can speak very highly of, other I know nothing about. Some judging by their web site and the standards employed, I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone. But to be fair to all I’m listing them here anyway. So this is where you can help me. Tell what you know or your option of the above associations.

So the question still remains do we need professional certification and if so who should step up and provide it, the Web Industry, Vendors or Educational Institutions. What do you think?

Technorati Tags: professionalism, web+standards, certification, web+associations, best+practice, education

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.

What I didn’t think I would find is table based layouts, font tags, inline styles, and very obtrusive JavaScript. But I did, over and over again. “Okay”, you say “maybe you just got a batch of old designers, none of the graduates would have had coding standards like that?” Sorry you are wrong. The web standard demonstrated by the graduates was appalling. I had to pinch myself several times, as I was sure I was back in 1999.

What has happened? I know Molly has commented on this to death, that the educational institutions just can’t keep up with the demands of the web standards and the pace at which the leading edge of the web industry operates. But the levels of skills I encountered were at least 6 years behind the current best web industry practice.

I normally associate professionally and even to a degree socialise with like minded folk of a web standards ilk. So am I living in a rarefied atmosphere of a sugar coated web standards world? Am I sitting in the 10% of the Web Industry, and the rest of the non web standards crew is the 90%?

This leads me to question, does the client really care if their site is web standards compliant? Do they truly care if their web site is future proofed and has an increase level of accessibility? If it ranks on Google, they are happy, and that’s more to do with good SEO than anything. There are clients that are just not interested in accessibility or standards, if it looks okay in the major browsers and their audience can use the site, then they are happy.

With a business environment becoming slightly complacent towards standards. Where print based designers with no desire or experience in web standards design can churn out “pretty” cookie cutter web sites via using various automated software products. Or where non standards compliant web designers can throw together the web design in less time that a non tables based layout (mainly due to CSS tweaks). Or where software vendors still develop CMS that are not web standards based, using table layouts and font tags. Why should I buck the trend? Why should I continue to wave the web standards banner? It’s basically costing me business. And in the hard light of day, much how I would love to do my design work for nothing, I still have to feed a family and keep a roof over our heads.

I really question are Web Standards good for Web Business. A point in case is the recent factionisation of the various web standards groups into separate camps. This alone doesn’t give much hope for the future.

Should we take the easier conservative road and forget about web standards and best practice and just concentrate on what looks good for the client. Personally I like to be on the fringe.

Technorati Tags: webdesign, webstandards, education, business, webbusiness, professionalism