I Just Met Morpheus

Remember that scene in the Matrix when Morpheus reveals to Neo that the world he has been living in is a lie? That everything he thought was real wasn’t? That’s how I feel today. Today is the end of the second day of Refresh ‘06, a Web dev conference in Orlando. Joel and I are here taking it all in. What I’m taking in is information that is causing me to be quite overwhelmed.

See, I’ve been designing Web sites since 1995. My first site was for my church. I made it in Adobe Pagemill 1.0. I had pictures, text, and colors.

Didn’t even have a domain name. But it was the best and one of the only church Web sites around. I was proud. Since then I’ve been self-taught and built sites for different clients in many different contexts and timelines. Always in tables.

Really never thinking about accessibility or standards. Alt tags were it. CSS was for fonts and color/links.

Even after I was hired at Spring Arbor University, I was behind the learning curve for technology. I have the raw skills and vision ability. But technically, in no man’s land. I can bring people together, listen to users, translate client expectations into results, but can’t design in CSS. I know no Java. I don’t have a firm grasp at all at standards. I know they’re important, but didn’t know how.

Now after five years at SAU and in our second redesign with an enterprise-level CMS that is going to be leveraged for many different groups and for multiple purposes, I am now getting ready to leave a conference in a state of shock. The stuff I know is out dated. The stuff I need to know will take longer than I have to design and develop the new arbor.edu. I just bought some books. And I have about 40 sites in a “Web Dev” bookmark in my Safari. And I’ve set up this blog. I’ve had this wordpress golden ticket saved for a year or so. Didn’t know what to do with it. Now I do.

I feel somewhat like Jerry McGuire when he had his “aha moment” and wrote his “mission statement”. Of course it got him fired. But he was inspired. Right now I am overwhelmed, but I am going to lay it all out for everyone to read and respond to. I’m a hack. I have no business being in the same area code as many of the people in the room I’m in. But I’m inspired. And I have to go where they already are. I don’t know how things will turn out, but I’m going to chronicle it all in the hopes that when Web 3.0 comes out and I’m on the cutting edge of where the technology is going, someone like me who is light years behind will find this blog and my ramblings and use it as a tool to move. To know it’s not where you are today. It’s where you aspire to be.

I’m aspiring. Starting now. Hope you enjoy the journey.