Pros & Cons of Managing a Website for a Small Company

I've now officially left my job as a website producer for a pension plan after six years doing the job. I recently won a SSHRC scholarship, so I'm now more able to focus on my studies and raising my family.

In looking back at my time managing the website for a small company, I realized that while such jobs are not right for everyone, there are many benefits.

1) Jack of All Trades
As not uncommon with working for a small company, I was pretty much a department of one. This means that I got the opportunity to dabble and learn about a lot of cool stuff (search engines, web analytics, AJAX, Flash, accessibility, etc) and refine skills (web writing and editing, information architecture, web design, etc.). I have friends who specialize in only one of these aspects. This might be fine to really hone one's craft, but I would have found it insufferably boring. There are a lot of fascinating aspects to websites and it's great to get to explore lots of them. However, it is frustrating sometimes as there is not ever enough resources to draw upon, projects can take a long time or never get done, and, there's no delegating. Even after six years and feeling like I was an expert, I still had to do basic chores to keep the site running and updated.

2) No Bells & Whistles
Small companies tend to not be able to afford the latest bleeding edge technology or design. For the most part, I'd say that's fine. With rare exception the latest hot stuff doesn't tend to add much value to a site, and can even be problematic for users. However, as an Internet professional , it's in our bones to want to try out cool stuff that's been proven to work. It quite frankly sucks sometimes to sit on the sidelines and watch the parade go by.

3) Be Your Own Boss
Small companies where their website is not a vital component of their businesses tend to not have much in-house expertise on running a website. In my case, this meant a great deal of autonomy to do projects I felt were worthy (and justified via business cases). It also meant that my expertise was valued, I didn't have to argue for every decision or priority (as can happen with team structures), and I didn't have someone looking over my shoulder. These environments can also mean that your work, however, is never an organizational priority, and one can be marginalized at times. Also, for someone wanting technical guidance or camaraderie, these places can be lonely - so it's best to recruit colleagues and mentors outside of the company to get advice and help from.

4) Sense of Individual Accomplishment
I readily acknowledge the contributions of programmers, writers, translators, designers and software vendors, all of whom invaluably contributed to the site. But for the day-to-day work of running of the site and of planning, there was really only me. I formerly worked with a company where everything was very much a team effort. While collaboration like this has advantages, it was sometimes hard to see one's individual accomplishment. Over the last few years, I had the opportunity to guide, direct and implement the website along the lines I felt were important. A lot of jobs, don't give one this degree of responsibility, pride and sense of accomplishment.

A few days before I left my job, I found out that the website relaunch I spearheaded was successful in winning an award recognizing the achievement (plus we also one an award for online annual report). So between this and the company launching its transactional website last week, I now feel that my swan song is complete. I can retire from the stage of financial services websites and see what new acts will come my way.

Poor Grades for e-Learning

As of last week, I have one more year of studies for my online master's in communication at Royal Roads. I'm currently in my sixth class, and classes finish for me in December, as afterwards I'll be working on my thesis.

While I have great respect for the university, the program, and my classmates, I am disappointed in Royal Roads. Despite the occasional good use of online media, there appears to be no overall commitment to e-Learning, instead they seem to rely on standard offline distance learning methods, with forums thrown in. So while I have not got the exposure to innovative e-Learning I had hoped for, there have been unexpected benefits from their approach.

I do like Royal Roads' use of three weeks of on-campus classes per year. The setting is sensational, as are the faculty and support staff - so it is a delight to be on campus.

The standard format of online classes is weekly to do readings and then answer specified questions and discuss via forums amongst one's teammates. There are forums to field questions to the professor, but this is for help and is not a fixture of the class. Essays, as with any university class, are the major basis of grading. There are no lectures per se, which for me is the biggest weakness as I find the readings do not say it all and I would have benefited more from a professor's insight on the subject matter (as we receive during our on-campus time).

Most of the course activity, aside from reading and essay writing, is discussions with one's team (a new team every class). I'm not sure if I lucked out, but I have never taken a class with such a group of intelligent, humourous, and personable people, so discussions are generally lively and insightful. However, there is a serious time commitment to keep up with discussions that is problematic for working professionals.

Of my six classes so far, there have been sporadic examples of e-Learning techniques. The best so far, was for an initial class, that made use of podcast lectures combined with PowerPoint presentations. Another professor held regular Skype discussions (which was the first time I used Skype, I'll admit). Another professor used HTML forms for tests.

My suggestion for improvement would be for Royal Roads to take the most effective and feasible e-Learning techniques and make it a core component of every class. e-Learning is not just about the coolness of technology, it can aid learning, as I experienced with the podcast lectures early on.

My suspicion is that most students don't choose online learning over in-class. Online programs offer more flexibility than traditional programs and that's why they are flourishing. However, face-to-face communication still has advantages and using technology and media effectively can help bridge the gap and maximize learning.

Social Media Popular in Canada's Websites

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Summer Camp - Facebook Style

I'm addicted to Facebook, I unapologetically admit.

Rather than be contrite, I delight in addicting my friends, and just this week I rejoiced in converting 3 hold-outs! I've blogged about my Facebook addiction before, but prior to last night my addiction was practiced at home alone.

Last night, I went to Facebook Camp Toronto 4. It was a free event (my favourite kind) at MaRS, which also hosted Mesh and is shaping itself as the spot for Internet and technology. There were hundreds of people attending, mostly developers. Toronto, it was pointed out, has the largest Facebook developer base in the world - not to mention one of the largest networks. While not a developer, my addiction and recent research fueled my desire to attend.

The speakers were excellent, including reps from the Palo Alto company itself, as well as three third-party application developers. Here were the main points for me:

1) Facebook will very soon (next week, perhaps) be doing a significant redesign. Mostly, the redesign will allow users to clean up, organize, and have more control over their Profile page. My profile page was getting so crowded that I had to delete things just to clean up. This won't be necessary anymore, but the downside is there won't be the one main page per person , rather a series of tabbed pages. Here's more info on the changes (must be a member of Facebook to see).

2) Facebook is getting serious about advertising. We knew Facebook would soon be vamping up its efforts to monetize its userbase, but they've got some really promising tools to make the actions more relevant to users. Basically, ads can by "hyper-targetted" based not only on demographics but also interests and other Facebook profile data. As a user, I think this will help make advertising relevant to me - I'd love to see ads for any Xena Warrior Princess products or services that may be out there, for example.

3) New fun apps keep getting are added to Facebook regularly. There were three presentations of Canadian-made Facebook apps, all of which seem to be very promising and potentially addictive:
a) Mouse Hunt - a quick and easy game (with great artwork)
b) Praize'n'raze - allows you to vote for your favourite local services
c) Slangbook - enter and vote on your favourite slang

I haven't had a chance to check them all out. But what I love about Facebook applications is that with various websites that require social participation, it is difficult to get one's social contacts there. For example, I am an ardent user of del.icio.us, Digg, and OurFaves but I can't convince my friends to join. My friends are on Facebook and so getting them to use various web applications is much esaier, and thus realizing the value and fun.

I saw the developers, Jerome Paradis and Kim Vallee, of one of my favourite Facebook applications, Status Competition, were at the camp last night. Status Competition is so effective and fun because it fits my Facebook behaviour. I like to quick check into Facebook about 1-2 times a day to see what's happening with my friends and I love to interact with the content in various ways. I love Status Competition because not only can you see at a glance the various status updates of your friends, but you can give a vote to the ones you enjoy and designate your feelings on the posting from "cool", "funny", "weird", "sad", "confusing" or "meh". The competition is mostly for bragging rights, but it's not whether you win or lose, it's how often you update your status (at least once a day is my preference).

It's great to see such cool Internet stuff happening in Canada. We may not have a company like Facebook in Canada, but apparently we have some great application developers here.

Canada's Cyber Celebs

In honour of Canada Day, I wanted to further document Canada's contribution to the Internet and cyberculture. This area is greatly underpublished, as I found out while researching my prior articles on Canada's top Internet successes.

Below I have collected a list of Canadians inventors, researchers, developers, or writers who have contributed to the development or our understanding of the Internet or cyberculture. I'd like this to be an ongoing project and I will flesh out the bios in more detail in the future.

• Alexander Graham Bell - without him all those on dial-up would be SOL
• Tim Bray, father of XML & co-founder of Open Text (early web search engine)
• Rhiannon Bury, academic, studies women and online fandom
• Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Flickr, pioneer in use of tagging
• Bill Buxton, Microsoft's principal researcher, pioneer in field of human computer interaction
• William Craig, founder of iCraveTV, the first company to stream TV over the Net
• Douglas Coupland, author of Generation X, Microserfs, JPod, etc.
• Peter Deutsch, leader of the team that invented Archie, the first Internet search engine
• John Demco, creator of the .ca domain, co-founder of Webnames.ca
• Hossein Derakhshan - influential Iranian blogger
  
• Cory Doctorow, activist, blogger & co-editor of Boing Boing
• Michael Geist, academic, leader in field of Internet law
• William Gibson, fiction author, visionary of cyberculture, coined term "cyberspace"
• Marina Glogovac, CEO of Lavalife
  
• James Gosling, inventor of Java programming language
• Kevin Ham, the world's leading domainer
• Graham Hill, founder of environmental blog site, TreeHugger
• Pierre Lévy, academic, developed notions of collective intelligence
• mafiaboy, prominent website hacker
  
• Emma Payne, author and founder of Wired Women
  
• Gerri Sinclair, founder of Canada's first multimedia research centre at Simon Fraser, founded NCompass Labs, content management software
• Mark Rzepka, pioneer of online pharmacies
  
• Jeffrey Skoll, co-founder of eBay
• Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics
• Clive Thompson, journalist has written for Shift, Wired
• Barry Wellman, academic, pioneer in studies of online communities & social networking
• Bob Young, founder of micropublisher, Lulu and former CEO of Red Hat

Please let me know of anyone who should be added to this list. I haven't included all the founders and leaders of the various Canadian companies (e.g. Research in Motion, Nortel, Club Penguin, StumbleUpon), but let me know if you feel they should be included.

Wearable Communications

I was in a record store several days ago and I saw something I hadn't seen since the 70s: T-shirt decals and the iron press for customers to order their own, customized T-shirt. It was fun to see such dated technology still in use and made me fondly recall the heyday of T-shirt decals. These Ts were really individualized communications that many people proudly wore and shared with all that could see them and their emblazoned chest. Upon reflection, I wondered why the Internet has not done more to revitalize wearable communications?

In the 70s, these decal Ts were a huge trend. While buttons that could be pinned to clothes pre-date this trend (I fondly recall my "Fonzie" button I had as a kid) they weren't clothes themselves. So these decal Ts may be the first case (that I know of) of overt communication messages on clothes.

Yes, all clothes say something about the wearer. But most clothes offer a more subtle, diffuse message (eg. what socio-economic or sub/counter group one belongs to, nationality, etc.) but not a specific message, such as decals enabled.

In the 70s, one could pick the style, size, colour and decal - and there was huge selection available, whether pop culture, artwork, humour or sexual sayings, travel destinations, politics, etc. These decals offered messages direct and easily perceptible by others.

Sure clothes with messages on them still exist (eg. companies, sports teams, pop culture, etc.) but it seems that they are not anywhere near as popular as the 70s and they tend to be more off-the-shelf or handed out en-masse (eg. everyone at a conference gets a T) and not made by an individual actively customizing their own wearable communication.

The website Threadless revamped this concept and added crowdsourcing. They allow anyone to upload their own proposed T-shirt art and then have the site's community votes on the designs to actually make it to production. But cool as this site is, I don't see much impact from it. In fact, I don't think I have seen anyone wearing their shirts (but then I may not be in their main customer demographic).

I looked to see if there was a website where one could upload their own artwork and get it made into a T-shirt. I'm sure there are such sites, but I couldn't locate one after searching for several minutes. Regardless, I would have thought the Internet would have enabled this kind of customized, individual production. I wonder if there just isn't a market for it?

Is this form of communication dead? Why did it die out? Did we replace clothes expressing individual identity (such as this) with collective identify via brands, such as the ubiquitous Tommy T?

Internet Usage in Canada for last year

Statistics Canada recently released their new report on Canadian Internet usage.

Among the most interesting findings:

1. Almost three-quarters (73%) went online for personal reasons last year - up from just over two-thirds (68%) in 2005
   
   
2. Ontario is above national average at 75% (Alberta & BC beat us)
   
   
3. Among people who used the Internet at home, 68% went online every day during typical month
   
   
4. Digital divide persists amongst those with lower income, lower education, and older – though gap continues to lessen gradually
   
   
5. Not a significant gender difference – but men tend to use the Net a bit more often and for a bit longer
   
   
6. Vast majority of Net users (94%) use it at home, 41% from work, 20% from schools, 15% from libraries
   
   
7. 88% of home users have high-speed connection
   
   
8. Approximately 50% of Canadians (Internet users or not) were very concerned about online credit card use, 44% about online banking and 37% about online privacy

Most common Net activities (of home Net users)

1. Email: 92%
2. General browsing for fun or leisure: 76%
3. Obtain weather or road conditions: 70%
4. Travel planning & arranging: 66%
5. View news or sports: 64%
6. Electronic banking: 63%
7. Window shopping: 60%
8. Ordering goods or services: 45%
   

A new question this year was how many had contributed content (blogs, photos, discussion groups), which was 20%. Considering how popular Facebook is in Canada, I think that figure may be off as people probably didn't think of social networking activity as creating content.

A big change in this year's survey is StatsCan added data from 16 and 17 years olds this time which they admit skewed results in comparison to prior years (eg. a huge jump in cyberstalking totals for Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake). There was also a huge spike in the use of instant messaging, use for education, downloading music, and watching TV online - no doubt due to this new teen influence.

Playing games remained at 39% from 2005 to 2007. So apparently, teenagers aren't wasting their time in their rooms playing games online; they're studying it would seem - and IMing of course.

Of the activities that can't be explained by the new teen influence, almost none of them experienced significant gains (i.e. more than 2-3%) since the last survey. Has use of the web pretty much hit the peak for most activities?