What Interests Bring You to this Career?
I’m always interested in the career paths of people in the industry. Some come from as far afield as philosophy, radiography, cartography and journalism. I’ve met a few librarians (who are hardcore Information Architecture people by trade). I’ve met students, lecturers, corporate developers and single parents who decided to make a dollar from home by improving their skills for the freelance market. Some people I’ve met in person and others I’ve met via contract work, blogging or socialising on the web.
This brings me to a general question you might feel like answering as you pass through this site on your travels. What interests bring you, and I specifically mean you as an individual, to this career of web design / web development? What are your passions? There are no wrong answers and nobody will think the worse of you if you tell us that you’re a failed mechatronics student with a terminating pass in basic programming.
The path that brought me here is a complicated one. I’m one of those people whose interest seems to move through areas which strongly relate to what we’re doing but I don’t see myself as a web designer / developer first. I don’t see myself as an IT person first either. I’m a writer. I’m a designer in the wider sense of the word (not implying for a moment that graphic design is my forte). I’m someone who likes to have strong specific domain knowledge but also need to have a broader knowledge of the field in general to back it up. Web professionals need to understand the medium, its interactions, technologies and business processes if we really want to improve our game.
I began as a writer and as you might notice I do what defines every writer. Ultimately writers write. Not for any reason but because that’s who we are. Just like painters paint and singers sing. In 2001 I turned on a computer for the first time in my entire life at a Certificate 2 in Information Technology and my IT career got underway. I completed a Certificate 3 in Information Technology (General) and decided to sign up for a Bachelor of Computing at the University of Tasmania. During the first few years of part time uni study I also completed Certificate 4 in Web Design and Certificate 4 in Web Development. Last year I also did Cisco Networking Certification in CCNA1 (Networking Basics) and CCNA2 (Router and Routing Basics). This is starting to sound like a certification process but I assure you its really not a story of school related learning.
That’s where it gets interesting. Exposure through school to software engineering principles and then the advent of my blogging career – which would be in about 2004 – led me along a path of education and interest that I think is important to professional development in the industry. I brought a book I’d never recommend called Making Websites for Dummies and discovered basic HTML and CSS. I then got interested in web standards in 2004 during my Ceritificate 4 in Web Design through a designer named Mike Marinos. He sparked my interest and sent me off to the Web Standards Group mailing list and numerous standardista resources that I continue to read almost religiously. This is where I discovered interest in usability and accessibility. Listen to the Boagworld podcast every week. And Debbie Millman’s Design Matters podcast of interviews with designers and industry leaders.
My interest then moved into design. My partner is an artist and I have high exposure to the arts in general and printmaking in particular. From design my interest moved to interfaces and curiosity about interactions between the human operator of software and the computer interface. We start to look at artificial intelligence, psychology, design and education theories, and the why of all these relationships on the screen.
Then came business management and marketing. A lot of web design is linked with marketing so understanding the theory is also important. If you want to make your client’s business successful then it pays to learn how to measure and achieve business success. Read Seth Godin regularly and his books. Look for entrepeneureal resources. There is a lot to these areas and it might chew up a few years of your time but it all expands on your value as a professional.
Ultimately this was interspersed with university subjects like Programming and Problem Solving, Software Process, Advanced Web Development, Web Management, Artificial Intelligence, Operating Systems, Algorithms, Software Design. Also there were units on business management, organisational behaviour, human resource management and marketing, with an internship at the Department of Economic Development. Subjects that supported my overall direction and interests. My university education opened doors of interest well beyond the IT focus of the degree itself.
At the moment I’m about to go back to writing. Or, rather, copy writing for an international management school doing their newsletter and some training manuals. Circles within circles of interest. I personally think the best web people out there are those actively engaged in self-learning. Those who avidly read blogs and books. Any career deserves participation and a realisation that we don’t know everything about everything. This began as a very small post and has chewed up my morning. If I had my time again I might have studied journalism. Perhaps.
So how did you get here? What interests led you to the point you stand today in the web industry? Are you a radiographer? A cartographer? Are you someone who sees yourself as a web professional or as a web worker who goes home at 5pm and forgets it all in front of the television? I’m curious.
