With everything changing so much so quickly, it’s been tough to figure out where to spend the small time we have left after work and where to focus – it’s surely impossible to keep up with absolutely everything.

So after being in this industry for 12 years now, where do we now stand as developers?

Master of One Trade & Knowledgeable of All

I’ve always been an advocate of niching yourself into one or two areas that you can really excel in. With so much going on, it’s nearly impossible to really master every area of the web or to do everything even remotely well. While I still believe this is more important than ever, it’s just as important to still be knowledgable in every other area.

I don’t offer SEO services outside of good-practices in HTML and semantics, but I’m familiar with keywords and optimization – enough to be able to give a client some advice and know the difference between actual optimization and the crooks of that sector. I don’t offer design services either, but I got my education in graphic design and I keep up with the latest trends and techniques so I’m able to judge what works and doesn’t for my clients.

In this respect, make sure you know enough to know what others are doing. Not to start the “should designers code or not” argument again (that dead horse has been beaten WAY too many times), you need to at least know enough to be able to judge others’ work – especially if you’re a freelancer and and dealing with clients. Clients don’t expect you to know everything, but they do expect you to at least know someone who does. You don’t want to refer them to a second-rate anything.

Assimilating The New

As soon as I hear of some new technology or version of what I do, I immediately get newbie paralysis. I’ve been coding a long time and even though I update my practices regularly and try to improve on structure and semantics with each new site – I still get paralyzed every time I hear of something new coming out. I did this with CSS3 and again with HTML5. I even do it when I hear about some new thing like the HTML5 Boilerplate.

It’s not that we hate new things – on the contrary most of us developers get bored with the old quick – but it’s the fact that in this day and age, change comes fast and it comes hard. You’re coding along just fine and then BAM, you wake up one morning and everyone is talking about something you’ve never heard about – or only heard about vaguely. You have 5 projects due today and a 100 emails to answer. What will come first? Usually the client.

I usually find myself brushing off the new technology. I once remember saying to myself that I would never be able to learn CSS3 – was I getting too old? Was I going to be like those old IT guys who think they know it all and still write in tables inline styles? What was going to happen to me?

Then, as I heard about rounded corners – I tried it once and it was quick to remember. The I heard about text shadows and once again it was quick and easy to learn and remember. Pretty soon I had all of the “cool effects” down and started diving deeper into advanced selectors. Before I knew it, I knew pretty much all there was to know about CSS3 and was ahead of the curve. I even had newbies asking me for help!

The same thing happened and is still happening with HTML5. With each new website, I learn something new until I’ve mastered what I’m after. I realized that you don’t have to learn everything right away and there’s no point to worrying about being behind everyone else. The only way you’ll turn into that “old IT guy” is if you stop learning completely, which brings me to…

Learn Something New Everyday

Developers can no longer afford to sit back and depend on what they know already. With the speed of information now, practices and languages are becoming outdated faster than  you can make another cup of coffee. It’s scary at first (see above) but remember that you don’t have to master everything.  Yes, there’s a new language and framework that comes out almost every day – and no, you don’t have to learn it. But be informed of the item, poke around in it, and decide whether to stick with what you already know or to move on.

People ask me why I stick with WordPress. Supposedly Drupal is supposed to be a more “grown up” CMS. And I still think Joomla is a piece of crap. Everyday I hear of new CMSs launching – this one is simpler, that one has more features. Yet I haven’t moved away from the first CMS I ever learned to develop in. I stick with WordPress for several reasons: I know it well; it’s infinitely expandable; it’s popular; but most of all – it’s easy for my clients to learn. You don’t have to go with something just because it’s the newest and shiniest. Do what works for you and most of all what works for your clients.

Your Thoughts

Where do you think we are as an industry right now? Where are we going?

There was a lot less sponsor goodies this year, but they were holding some great sponsor activities, including two photo contests. I kissed a gnome in one and threw a canoe with Mitch Canter of Studionashvegas in another.

Some Good Times

I loved hanging out with Courtenay Rogers, who’s I’ve worked with before while she was at Primarily Rye, and has now brought me on the redesign of her new employer’s site, Bone McAllistor Norton. She did a beautiful job of organizing the event.

I also got to meet a Seth Green look-a-like and the guys from Industry Collective, which are a group of fantastic web professionals, who always make the coolest swag and come up with all of the fun Barcamp giveaways. This is where I ended up kissing the gnome. Cross your fingers and wish me well in winning an iPad2…I wants it!

It was nice catching up with some other local freelancers I know well, Brad Blackman and Mitch Canter. It’s crazy how I’m literally 20-30 minutes away from these guys and we never talk!

Build a Native iPhone App in 30 Minutes or Less by Dick Pepper

I got in late to this one, but Dick was just telling us about using hybrid apps, which are apps that are build using HTML/CSS and placed into the Objective C framework, so that you can still have an app in the app store.

If you go this route, he suggested using UI frameworks, like Sencha or Webkit, to get the look and feel of an actual app.

Some frameworks tie into Objective C and are ideal for presentation focused apps. Content rich apps work better in HTML5. The cool thing about doing a hybrid app, is that you only have to support one browser and you can use all of webkit’s features, which makes the code a lot shorter.

UX Leadership: See, Speak Share by Laurie Kalmanson

Laurie spoke of everyday objects that had great UX: like the recent trend for car manufacturers to attach the gas cap to the car so drivers don’t forget it; or when a microwave beeps to alert you to finish food and then stays quiet. She noted that when machines got out of the way and did it politely, that was what a good user experience was. Good UX should be delightful and solve problems. It should also give people things they’ve never seen or imagined before.

Interfaces have beats like songs and in mobile, there are so many ways you can delight and surprise your users. Laurie pointed out some popular apps that have bad UX design, for example, Twitter’s header, Facebook’s privacy settings page and Google’s Gmail header.

The difference between IA and UX, are that IA’s (information architects) create outline focused designs, whereas those focusing on UX (user experience) include the visual design.

Let’s Talk About WordPress by Mitch Canter

A good introduction to WordPress, Mitch talked about reducing WordPress download times. He mentioned that the small additional server load that accompanies permalinks without the numerical date in the URL will be fixed in WordPress 3.3 (yay!). A use of a CDN (content delivery network), while ranging around $40 a month, dramatically reduces load time.

You should also use a caching plugin, which is a static screenshot of the site. He recommended W3 Total Cache. I stopped using WP Super Cache after I redid the portfolio and went ahead and tried out W3 Total Cache with his recommendation. It works right out of the box, which I like.

In WordPress, if you change the title you don’t have to change the URL. If you do however, you should use the plugin Redirection to set up htaccess redirects and avoid 404 errors.

Someone asked if the date in the URL was important to SEO, and Mitch replied it wasn’t that important.

Another user asked if there was an issue with having too many plugins – Mitch said a famously fast site had over 40 plugins installed. It’s not how many plugins you have, but how bloated the code in those plugins are. It’s the external calls to things like APIs that slow a site down.

Best Practices: The Worst Case Scenario by Josh Oakes

Josh Oakes did a fantastic talk on best practices. He stated that best practices aren’t what everyone else is doing, a consensus reality or what you call your opinion to end an argument. Instead, best practices is a standard way of doing things that can be used by people in different situations.

However, best practices have three problems:

1. Specificity – What happens if you can’t adopt these practices? Best practices can not account for the unique knowledge required for or details of a problem.
2. Baggage – Best practices bring baggage, for example, if it’s your punch list, you might state your goal, go through your list in a straight line and then bring in the assumptions and constraints that your best practice was designed for.
3. Process – Doesn’t inclue anywhere to see if it actually worked. Best practices don’t help you to improve. It makes you really good at seeing problems that aren’t there and tricks you into thinking your work is good enough and needs no improvement.

To keep best practices from ruining a project, consider them, don’t just implement them at the start of a project.

Innovation is a byproduct: Why you don’t have to be innovative to be a great programmer by Jacques Woodcock

A fantastic rambling of a sem-drunk Jacques (hey it was the end of the day!), Jacques spoke about what innovation was and who had it. He said innovation could be a new idea, method or device or the creation of something better accepted by markets. Innovative companies include Apple, Tesla, Google, Disney, Nike and Whole Foods.

He also discussed a few flots: WebTV, AOL, Blockbusters, New Coke, HP Touchpad and the Zune (my contribution!).

What separates innovation from flops is the creation of a better process that solves the problem and has a great user experience. Apple doesn’t invent products, but instead creates a better product.

The US is no longer a product based economy, but is an IP, copyright and patents country. You used to have to invent something to get a patent, instead now you can just detail it on paper and be the first to file. This, unfortunately, covers software and forces smaller companies to compete in a race against larger ones.

Back to Apple! Jacques mentioned that both Android and the iPhone were innovative, they just solved different problems. Apple focuses on UX problems and providing rich features, while Android wanted to provide solutions, features and a quality competitive item.

In order to have an innovative solution, you need to understand the business goals of a company.

glass.Max() = The Rise of the Female Developer/Leader

Moderated by Kenneth White, this was the first talk I’ve ever participated in! It was basically a panel of me and three other great ladies and we talked about getting into the tech field and the issues with being a female in a male dominated sector. I’m still looking for audio or video of our talk, so if you know someone who recorded it, please let me know!

Did you enjoy Barcamp?

Feel free to share your thoughts and photos!

Images by Dave Delaney and Wonderdawg777

Google+ was/is currently a invite only network, thus giving it that “exclusive” feel. From the get go, there are some really awesome features that they got right like circles (groups for the uninformed) which enables you when you share new posts via the network to set who sees what. Compared to FB and Twitter (or any other service for that matter), this is a big win for the privacy nuts among us – or the guys trying to hide posts they do instead of doing work at the office from the boss

But where is all this leading to? Without beating about the bush, it is obvious that Google is taking on Facebook, even though they might have the numbers (700+ million users), Google has proved time and again that they are one of the few companies on the Internet that users keep returning to. Will they beat them? I hope so. Looking from a statistics point only, it will seem that they would, as G+ took under 10 days to accumulate 10+ million users, whereas Twitter and FB took over 100 days each. But this alone doesn’t proof that they will win the social media war that is going on. As many researches have shown, G+ is still majorly crowded by the IT people, thus it is still clean from those horrible apps that we all have come to hate on Facebook (here is looking at you Zynga with that damn Farmville and its myriad of clones…)

So what would happen when it goes mainstream, i.e. when your dad/mom/sister/brother/grandad/dog/lizzard start getting onto it? What can we expect to see come from this? Google has always come to the game with innovative new ideas and technologies, so this geek is hoping they keep improving. As long as they keep it from going the route Facebook went, it should/would survive. But will it become the all-encompassing portal that we go to to keep in touch with everyone we know? That is the real question. I don’t have the answers, nor do any of these tech sites posting their predictions.

What would be interesting to see is what they will bring to the table to win more users over and start cutting into Facebook’s market share. I for one haven’t used Facebook in more than 2 weeks, I just go and check who’s birthday I might have missed, give them a call (note that I don’t post on their walls I actually call them, something that doesn’t seem to happen anymore).

So, what do you guys think? Will G+ win? Or will it go down in history as Google Wave version 2?

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Now that I’ve started my own company and am essentially my own boss though, what’s next? Do I continue freelancing forever? Do I continue narrowing my niche and raising my fees?

Before trying to figure out how to make it to your dream job, you need to first figure out what it is. Not only what it is, but how long you’re going to do your dream job and what’s next after you achieve your next dream.

For this post, I’d like to get a little bit personal and talk about how I’m starting to shift my business, and what you can do about yours.

View my post on FreelanceFolder »

It’s interesting to see how many freelancers just work wherever they can, be it the local Starbucks, a spare bedroom or even the kitchen table. From my experience though, it’s extremely important to have a nice dedicated space, preferably filled with your favorite things.

While I don’t do any sort of graphic design, interior design is one of my favorite hobbies so I thought I’d share some tips and inspiration with you.

Read the rest of my post on FreelanceFolder »