My Journey And The State Of The Web Industry
While I would like to say “I am back”, I never truly was here. I projected images and did not truly project my soul into my blog.
I started commercially working in the web industry over 12 years ago. I attended my first conference only 5 years ago. While people were very nice and accepting, I quickly felt that my age held me back. It did somewhat, I was maturing1 and I had not learnt many of the fundamental life lessons. It did not help me.
I started a blog but I never put my personality behind it. I used it as a tool to project an older image and to generate leads and ultimately I felt that I did myself a great disservice. I did not blog for myself nor did I use my greatest selling point, myself. Although, this blog is not to sell; there is a handy link at the top if you wish for my services but I will not push them.
I grew to have a lot of frustration for the web design community and the ‘web celebrities’, with the huge egos and more importantly with the “Preach first, practice later” mindset. The truth of the matter is; no matter how much I felt like that, I should have just tried to separate myself from that.
The web celebrity culture is a flip sided coin. It does good in the fact that it gives incentives for people to blog but it also intimidates a lot of both new and experienced talent. I have spoken to no less than 8 people in the last 12 months who were considering getting into web design, but were strongly considering not to because of it.
I also believe that due to this culture, the more popular get more popular and the rest of the industry blog ecosystem becomes more stagnant.
When I started my old personal blog, it had thousands of followers with only a year. The reason behind this was because I bared my soul to it, I gave a real piece of me to it. That’s what I aim to do with this blog.
I’ve been considering starting again for months and on Saturday I decided that I would stop thinking about it and just do. So I quickly made a design and implemented it (excuse the fact it is rough around the edges) . So I am back, or I am starting, or whatever. This is my proper go at a blog. Thank you for reading and I hope you stick around. While I am trying to start fresh, I will try to find some of my best still-relevant posts from the past and repost them.
- though when do we stop? [↩]
Welcome Back.. Always a pleasure to read your thoughts.. x
Interesting thoughts on the whole “web celebrity” wank that’s been going around lately, I certainly share a similar opinion. For me, I think the biggest issue is that the bulk of these “celebrities” who end up speaking at conferences and circulating their own name are actually pretty talentless, and rarely show any work that actually backs up the regard people seem to hold them in.
I believe we’re certainly in line for an “Emperor’s Clothing” moment…
@Peety – Thank you.
@Chris – Those who can’t, teach. Saying that I think there are some superb designers out and developers out there who speak.
Good to see your site up and running Zach, looking forward to some good, genuine posts.
On the ‘web celebrity’ thing: I totally agree and it’s frustrating (always the same crew as well!) Can’t see it changing for the better anytime soon, but I hope it does.