A Better Way to Get Educated

As you may remember, secondary education for web development and design is something that interests me greatly. I've mentioned before that the curriculum taught in most colleges tends to be dated and in need of definite help. Opera published their Web Standards Curriculum, and that was a great step in the right direction, but The Web Standards Project (WaSP) has taken it to an all new level with their recently launched InterAct Curriculum.

WaSP's InterAct Curriculum was specifically developed to help take some of the pressure off current educators in creating and maintaining a curriculum based on current industry standards. Thanks to the work of numerous educators and industry professionals, the InterAct Curriculum accomplishes that. The current, and initial, release contains 11 courses that fall into one of six general tracks:

• Foundations


• Front-end Development


• Design


• User Science


• Server-side Development


• Professional Practices

A Complete Package

There's a lot of work that went into the development of the curriculum. For each course there are assignments, core competencies, learning modules, recommend textbooks and additional recommended reading. The content in each course is carefully selected, the books include fantastic titles like Designing with Web Standards and PPK on Javascript, and the recommended reading contains some great writing from around the web, including articles from Opera's web curriculum.

There are two other releases scheduled, one in March of 2010 and one sometime after that. Each will contain a few more courses, as outlined in their roadmap. The best part is, this is an ongoing project and community driven. That means that the curriculum will not become stagnant, but will continue to evolve with current industry standards.

Getting Involved

Being community driven, there are plenty of ways to get involved. Educators can contribute assignments and modules that they've implemented in their own courses and believe to be helpful. There is also a place to discuss the curriculum and input suggestions or criticisms to help fine tune the subjects addressed.

Get the Word Out

I doubt if many educators (if any for that matter) will argue against the value of having the curriculum available to them. Considering all the work that went into its development, and the fact that industry experts were envolved, ensuring that the curriculum lines up with current practices, it's just too valuable a resource to pass on. I think the biggest challenge then, is to make sure and get the word out about the curriculum.

We need to go out and start sharing the information with local college professors and advisory teams. If we can start communicating the value of adjusting existing curriculum to model the roadmap laid down by WaSP, that would go a very long ways in speeding up the adoption of these courses and helping to increase the level of competence for new professionals fresh out of school.

Love It or Leave It

One of the highlights of SXSW this year for me personally, was being able to see a panel with Andy Budd of Clearleft, a person and company for whom I have the utmost respect. The panel was about usability testing and the tools you can use to better know your users, but one of the major takeaways I got had more to do with how to approach your job in general.

The discussion that led to Budd's little slice of wisdom revolved around how to get a company's designers and developers together and interested in usability testing. One response was to entice a team with pizza and soda and make a day out of it. Budd's response was that if you have to bribe your developers for them to take an interest in improving their products, then "hire better people". As Budd said, "It's everyones job to build better ****!" (Profanity excluded but I think it still makes the point!)

Budd's passion on the topic was inspiring, and the point he raised was an excellent one. Continually improving your skills, and therefore the products you develop, should not be a chore; it should be the goal.

I can think of two reasons for not trying to continually improve your current set of skills:

1. You have no desire to improve.


2. You feel there is no need.

No Desire to Improve

If you have no desire to improve, find a different career. Sorry to be blunt, but I believe we are not intended to spend our lives working on something that we have no desire to be doing at the highest level of competence that we are able to obtain. If you're not in a profession you truly enjoy, find one that you do.

No Need to Improve

If you feel there is no need to improve, that you know all you need to know about a topic...then you're doing it wrong. Whether it be improvements to your speed, efficiency, quality or general knowledge base, there is always room to improve. If you think you know everything there is to know, you most certainly do not.

For truly great work, you must be passionate about what you do, and you need to surround yourself with other passionate people. If you're not in that situation, whether it be the people who surround you or the career you've chosen, do whatever you must to get there. Life is too short to not spend it doing something you truly enjoy.

New Arrival

Things have been a bit silent around here lately, but I feel for a pretty good reason.

As many of you who are on Facebook or Twitter no doubt already know, on February 7th my wife and I had our first child, a little baby girl. Little is a bit relative here...Naomi Adalyn was an ounce shy of 9 lbs and was 21" long. I wanted to get this post up a bit earlier, but as you can probably guess, she's kept us quite busy.

She's very healthy, and both my wife and I are very happy (and a little tired!). Hopefully as we continue to get accustomed to our new schedules, I can get back to fairly regular postings.

That Time of Year Again…

Last year I attended SXSW for the first time. I had said that I would try to recap the conference, but never really did that. Best laid plans of mice and men and all that. I haven't really attended any other major conferences, so I don't have much to compare it with, but the experience was fantastic.

So fantastic, in fact, that thanks to the generosity of my employer and a little good luck, I am going to be attending again this year. There were a few lessons I learned while attending last years conference that I'm going to keep in mind this year, to hopefully glean even more value from SXSW.

Plan Loosely

Last year, I made the attempt to plot out, hour by hour, every panel that I was going to attend. The truth is, of all the panels I attended, maybe 50% were those that I had planned on. The rest of the time, whether due to how I was feeling at that particular instant, recommendations of people I met, or interests kindled by earlier conversations, I attended panels that in some cases, didn't seem like they would have interested me earlier. The result, was that I attended many panels that did a great job of pushing my knowledge in some areas that I really hadn't explored before.

I do think there is some benefit in going through the panel listings and identifying some that really are must-attends. There were a few from last year, Secrets of Javascript Libraries comes to mind, that I had considered absolute musts to attend, and was sure to keep those time slots set aside. This year though, other than identifying this year's must attends, I'm going to keep the rest of those time slots subject to change.

Be Ready to Network

One of the most amazing, and inspiring things about SXSW (and I would imagine other conferences as well), is being surrounded by so many people with similar interests, who are also passionate about the web. It should come as little surprise, that these people with a passion for the web are almost all hoping to strike up conversation with interesting people throughout their time there. With very few exceptions, this was true of everyone I met, regardless of any kind of pre-conceived 'internet fame'.

I met some fantastic people with some great ideas, several of which I have kept in contact with throughout the year. Some of these people are attending again this year, and I am looking forward to meeting with them again. I am also looking forward to meeting a whole new flood of people, and hearing about their opinions and ideas for the web.

The value of these conversations and networking cannot be overstated, and in many cases, this networking can become even more valuable than the panels themselves. The added benefit is that networking, combined with continued conversations with these people throughout the year helps to maintain that 'SXSW high' that otherwise runs out all too soon.

Soak It All In

Five days seems like a long time for a conference, but it goes by quicker than you'd think. Once it's done, you have to wait another year for March to roll around, and you never know whether expenses and circumstances will allow you to attend the following year. So, I'll make every effort to soak up each day that I'm there...the panels, the conversations, and yes, the parties.

I believe I'm still young enough that I can attend panels all day, stay out at the parties and social activities till late at night, and still have plenty of energy to get up for the next morning's first sessions. Seeing as how there's plenty of Starbucks stands set up in the hallways, I can also rely on my good friend caffeine to help out a bit. I can't imagine experiencing SXSW in any other way than cramming my days full of as many inspiring conversations and informative panels as possible.

Getting In Touch

If anybody else is going to be down in Austin for SXSW this year, feel free to look me up. I'll be getting down there the morning of the 13th (Friday) and heading back the morning of the 17th (Tuesday). The best way to get ahold of me while I'm down there will be via Twitter, so feel free to ping me if you want to meet up. The conversations are half the fun, and I'm looking forward to meeting more people this year.