The Monthly Newsletter for Web Professionals

Volume 8 Issue 04 - April 2006

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Letter from the Executive Editor

By Bill Cullifer

Successful Web Professional Initiatives

A Tale of Three States: Illinois, New York and North Carolina have emerged as Web professional heavyweights

Every great initiative needs leaders, and in elevating the Web profession, Illinois, New York and North Carolina and currently serve as models for the rest of the country.

The progressive support for the Web profession in these states and more specifically, Web professionals within education and state government, is proving that we can not only elevate the Web profession to that stature that it deserves, but empower support business, industry and government to compete in global economy.

For a number of years now, a significant number of employers at all levels have been telling us here at the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) that our institutions of learning need to do better job in preparing potential employees for the broad range of technology, interpersonal, and collaborative work environment skills required in today’s competitive economy.

Doug Busch, Vice President of Intel Corporation agrees. In a speech last year at the League for Innovation conference, the international organization dedicated to catalyzing the community college movement, Busch laid out the reasons why industry is not likely to reverse the outsourcing trend:

“Basically, technical workers in Asia, India, and Eastern Europe are attractive because of their skills, cost, and availability. To be competitive, American workers need to excel as creative problem solvers, understand the business culture, demonstrate excellent communication skills, and succeed in collaborative environments," said Busch.

Excellence in higher education

One institution integrating business with a broad range of technology topics into its curricula is Illinois Central College (ICC) of East Peoria, IL.

Professor Mark DuBois, ICC Web professional program manager for example, has led several student groups to take top honors in a National Web Design and Development Contest co-sponsored by SkillsUSA, a 225,000 member organization, and the non-profit professional association WOW.

Professor DuBois's students are demonstrating the value proposition of teaching strong technology and business skills by taking home first and second place in the overall category at the annual SkillsUSA National Conference event in Kansas City, MO.

The ICC program, developed with local and national standards in mind offers an Associate's degree in Web Systems that conforms with WOW’s international advisory board standards.

In addition to his outstanding academic achievement at ICC, Professor DuBois also heads up WOW’s National Articulation Initiative. The Articulation Initiative’s seven point plan aims to:

Excellence in State Government

Another great example of excellence, this one in state government, is the NYS Forum. Two standing committees within the Forum, the Webmasters' Guild and the IT Accessibility Committee, have launched several initiatives to raise the level of professionalism among public sector Web professionals.

The Guild, a regional chapter of the WOW, is led by some of the most technology- and business-savvy Web professionals within state government. The IT Accessibility Committee works with web developers and the NYS Office for Technology to support state policies and standards by advocating for compliance with generally accepted industry standards,

Recognizing ten years ago that web development was a new and promising discipline, the Guild has provided monthly informational presentations with topics ranging from:

Two years ago, the Guild and the IT Accessibility Committee launched a survey to find out what training web developers had been receiving and what future training opportunities those developers would find the most useful. Surprisingly, most respondents indicated that the monthly Guild meetings were the only formal web development training they had received. Many indicated that they were largely self-taught, and many were not considered part of their agency's traditional IT infrastructure. Future research into the survey's findings culminated in the release last year of a white paper, "Mastering the Web Revolution in New York State Government," which detailed the evolution and present state of the profession, along with specific recommendations for elevating the skills of those working on agency web sites. (The survey is available in PDF format on the Forum's web site: www.nysforum.org .)

Realizing the importance of basic standards-based training in developing usable and accessible web sites, the Guild and the IT Accessibility Committee recently collaborated with the NYS Governor's Office of Employee Relations and the Public Employees Federation, the state's second largest employee union, and local training company MicroKnowledge, Inc. to design a new training series to support web professionals. "Successful Web Communications" is a comprehensive, standards-based web development curriculum that not only develops the core skills of web practitioners, but also targeted the non-technical executives and program managers involved in making decisions on web content and presentation, stressing the importance of good design techniques and adherence to industry standards. The program has been wildly successful, with more than 300 people going through at least one of the classes offered, and has yielded positive evaluations from participants.

Collectively this 400-plus member organization has demonstrated the value of:

Next Generation of Web Professionals

One of the finer examples of excellence in education at the secondary level, is a program headed up by Karen Sanders, Teacher at the Career Educational Center East Chapel High School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Ms. Sanders is a WOW Certified Web Designer Associate and has led her students to achieve statewide honors in a variety of Web design contest and will compete in the 2006 National Web Design contest held in Kansas City this June.

Chapel Hill High School’s Web Design program is a model program and leads the nation in preparing technology proficient and business savvy Web professionals that employers are looking for the most.