Day Two started early again, with break­fast with Molly Holzschlag speak­ing on the topic of “The new professionalism”.

Pro­fes­sion­al­ism (and often, lack there of) is a topic Molly has explored pre­vi­ously on her blog, and in fact a post I wrote in response to one of her posts way back in Novem­ber 05 is one of the most pop­u­lar on my own site, indi­cat­ing that a lot of peo­ple are inter­ested in it. My involve­ment with Port80 and the new WIPA organ­i­sa­tion that is being set up in Aus­tralia, as well as the Web Stan­dards Group, mean that it’s some­thing I’m espe­cially inter­ested in.

Cof­fee and bagels in place, Molly intro­duced the topic and let us know that she wanted the ses­sion to be a dia­logue with the audi­ence rather than a lec­ture. She talked about how the field of web devel­op­ment came about, and how that has resulted in some of the prob­lems we face today — there’s no uni­ver­sal or even wide­spread nomen­cla­ture to describe what we do; there’s no empha­sis on edu­ca­tion, stan­dards or best prac­tices; there’s a large gap between what the edu­ca­tors teach and what the real world requires; there are many uneth­i­cal prac­tices upheld in the industry.

Next Molly asked for some input from the audi­ence, and var­i­ous peo­ple talked about the newly formed WIPA organ­i­sa­tion, Port80, the WSG, and a Web Developer’s organ­i­sa­tion of the wrong kind that was started in New Zealand. It’s encour­ag­ing to see that peo­ple are work­ing towards solu­tions to the prob­lems — but we still have a long way to go yet.

Finally, Molly asked for some input from the audi­ence for per­sonal philoso­phies for work­ing on the web. My own is “make the web a bet­ter place” — I can exam­ine any­thing I’m doing at any time and ask “does this make the web a bet­ter place”? Derek Feath­er­stone offered a great one — “first, do no harm”. Oth­ers included “don’t abuse the trust of the online com­mu­ni­ties” and “don’t lock your client into com­ing back (with tech­nol­ogy) — make them want to come back”. All great sen­ti­ments for work­ing as a professional.