Fronteers
Guild of Front-End Developers
A summary of what's going on in Holland
by Peter-Paul Koch
for Yahoo!, Oct. 19th, 2007
Purposes
- Professionalising front-end developers
- Give clients a chance to distinguish good front-end progammers from bad
- Make clear what good front-end developers have to know
- Skillswaps, networking etc.
Target audience
- Large website creation companies
- Small companies and freelancers
Definition: large website creation companies are companies whose core business is the creation
of websites for others, and who employ at least 25 people.
Who supports us?
The level of support is awesome
- Large companies (and their organisation)
- Government as a client (strictly informal)
- A few teachers (their numbers will grow)
Background: Web Guidelines 1
- Encourage accessibility, durability, and findability of government material.
- Based on W3C specs, WCAG, and best practices
- English translation
Background: Web Guidelines 2
- All ministries have agreed to have their websites Guideline-proof by the end of 2010
- Advisory, but likely to be followed by most branches of government in the next few years
- EU might be interested
- In practice, many financial institutions follow similar protocols
But ...
This assumes there are enough standards-aware web developers
around to create all these sites
... and there aren't (as yet)
Besides, clients need to have a way of separating good front-end developers
from bad
Certification 1
- We certify people; not companies or websites
- HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, Context
- Oral, personal exam
- Clients (esp. government) will eventually pay attention to this certification
Certification 2
- Certification status (informal or formal?) still under discussion
- Starting up right now; we won't yet publish any findings
- Eventually the results will have to go public
Meetings
- Purpose: networking, get to know each other, skill swaps
- I personally will arrange meetings in Amsterdam.
- If you want meetings in your own town, organise them.
- Fronteers has a bit of budget for supporting meetings.
Action 1
- Persuade large companies (both creators and clients) to openly declare they're working with web standards.
- Organise conferences, training sessions, and such
Action 2
- Education. Right now, "multimedia" studies have little to do with everyday reality (in progress)
- Get the press in (partly done)
- Harmonise job titles. (Web designer? Web developer? Web producer?)
Your turn
Discuss