will write for food

In a well-written and thoughtful post over at Smashing Magazine, Vitaly Friedman has questioned where the community spirit of web design has gone, and voices concerns over the formation of ‘cliques’.

I agree with many of Vitaly’s points, and I share similar concerns.

For example, I was quite shocked by the reaction to a tweet that I recently posted about the same people talking at design and development conferences. I think some people thought I was attacking them personally, and that I was questioning their credentials. Neither of these points were true. Many of the people that speak regularly at such events are good friends, with a vast wealth of experience, for whom I have the utmost respect. (And those people that know me personally would appreciate that I’m not the kind of person to employ linkbait just to stir up a reaction.) However, in any scenario where a minority of people speak on a subject - by no fault of their own - you can end up with dogmas being established. Those that question these ideas are never likely to do so in an open forum, in the main, for fear of the backlash that may ensue.

In the majority of cases what I’ve outlined above isn’t a bad thing, because the principles being promoted are sound, but there is definitely a ‘follow’ mentality that has clearly affected the forum for online debate.

However, having said all this, I actually think there’s an extremely strong community in the different areas of web design - as strong as it’s ever been, in fact. Maybe there’s a lack of centralised resources, but there’s a vast number of small networks being established that enable you to pool experience and resource. It may take you time to find that mailing list, Github project, or local meet-up, but eventually you will.

I’m consistently buoyed by the energy and passion within web design and development, and though this community may not be centralised in one specific place, I think community is still at the heart of what the majority of us are trying to achieve.

NOTE: I was rather high on prescription drugs when I wrote this, so please excuse any confused points - and typos.

When you work in publishing for long enough, you end up having ‘moments’. These moments can manifest themselves as inspirational coverlines, a compelling idea for a feature, or a cracking covermount. Thankfully, I’ve had a handful of these moments in the 10+ years that I’ve been in publishing. But there’s a flipside.

For every moment of inspiration, there’s likely to be a car crash waiting in the wings. I’ve had quite a few of these, too. The following image is of a cover that came perilously close to hitting the newsstand back in 2003. I was deputy editor at the time, but I think I need to take equal ‘credit’ for the concept with Paul Douglas (Paul was editor of the .net in 2003, but I’m pretty sure this was the result of one of the many ‘That would be so funny!’ conversations we used to have).

In hindsight, the cover still ticks a lot of boxes, but seriously: WHAT WERE WE THINKING?! ;)

I posed a question to @jimmy_wales about net neutrality. This is what he said: http://audioboo.fm/boos/254532-jimmy-wales-on-net-neutrality

It’s the question that keeps me awake at night (or maybe that’s the cheese). Anyway, I’d love to hear about your pongy preference.

What’s the best stinky cheese?