Influx of webbies

[garycocs]

Anyone notice that a lot more people are getting into the web design side of things now with all these redundancies. Out of my old department there are two lads getting into it out of six, I was just wondering what people thought about this? Any consequences??

Also home next week, anyone need any work done??

Nice wan

Gary

 

[babyboy808]

Consequences? Not at all. If they put in the hard work and stick it out and it goes well for them, fair play. But I'd say most of these people will fizzle out and get a 9-5 within a few months. If they start to think web design is easy money, they should think twice.

 

[Kieran]

I agree it is isn't just technical ability alone that will help them succeed they also need to be out there networking and making both customer and technical contacts.

I bet there are tons of people being laid off with excellent design and graphics skills. I hope they can make some money from web design but it means more than Photoshop, PHP and solid design skills.

It means forming a pipeline, developing a network and working hard with each client to explain what they get for their money. 99% of people who call me are not technically literate so the ability to explain in laymans terms to them what they are getting for their money is important.

And last but not least there aren't too many independent web design guys out there driving Ferraris (reminds me to drop mine for its 5K mile service) so it is best to have a technical network as well for more advanced jobs.

 

[link8r]

Oh yes Garycocs, oh yes! There must be more web companies than pubs in Ireland now...

Hopefully it will drive innovation in the Irish IT Industry - the web is poised to break the desktop as an Application Server - this gives us a big opportunity to build a strong, indigenous web industry. Maybe this will give us an incentive to develop products and web applications.

I think we should start to foster and encourage more private-based initiatives, like the Greenhouse Project (Start-up incubator), the Bizcamps (BizCamp|A user generated business conference with open, participatory workshop-events, where content is provided by you the participants. - new ones being planned for October 2009), etc and also get behind local application developers like IGO People, learnpipe (find instructors, learners, courses and courseware learnpipe.com), etc


The end of the second world war resulted in heaps of engineers being laid off from Military and Military vendor R&D labs - two people, Bill & Dave, saw a globalising economy and a huge opportunity - so they hired a good few of them - enter HP...

 

[garycocs]

I think there are a lot of opportunities out there, and you're probably right about encouraging more private-based initiatives.

Would there be any call for a few of us on here coming up with something? I really like the idea of the webmaster forum, it has worked well for me in the past I'm just wondering if we could develop the network further? Workshops? Brain Storming etc? An actual organization (like the IEE but for webbies or something), like people are saying the web based operating systems around the corner and all that.

Kinda went off topic there and I know things like this have been brought up in the past but I thought I'd just throw it out there!!

P.S. still lots of pubs out there thank chr1st

 

[link8r]

I have been thinking of something like the IEE for the web industry.

I spoke to the iia and they are planning more initiatives, like how to properly build a tender etc. that will be quite useful for a LOT of people out there.

Private equity - was hoping that more of this would become available - and maybe it is - with the property market crashing. The property market has soaked up so much of Irish Private Equity.

do you want to kick off a sticky thread on it, let everyone throw in 2c?

 

[garycocs]

Ya I reckon if you created a sticky thread it might be good!

I reckon one of the many problems is timing, I'll be home next week with time on my hands but others will probably in a different situation and a few weeks from now it could be the other way around.

Anyone else any thoughts on it?

 

[jmcc]

I have been thinking of something like the IEE for the web industry.

Organisations like IEE only tend to work when the barriers to entry to the market are high. With web development, there is nothing to stop some schoolkid doing a website and competing with professional web developers.

I spoke to the iia and they are planning more initiatives, like how to properly build a tender etc. that will be quite useful for a LOT of people out there.

I was trying to remember if I had ever heard of most of the board nominees. Most web developers would probably not waste money on joining IIA as it is still seen as a Dublin-centric networking organisation. One of the best examples would be Waterford. In December 2000 held an event here. The next event was held in March 2009. It was meant to be about how to make money from websites. IIA hadn't even the manners to have a Waterford web dev on the panel and that did not go down well. Some on the panel were well worth listening to but the problem was that instead of how to make money from our own websites (something that a lot of the audience came to hear) we got to hear about how other people made money, if at all, from their sites. There was absolutely nothing about monetisation with Adsense and affiliate networks.

Perhaps some organisation that represents web developers etc may be viable but web development is a very geographically fragmented business and it is also highly competitive.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Byron]

there is nothing to stop some schoolkid doing a website and competing with professional web developers.

I was that schoolkid, alas the days of plenty!