Funny thing being in this business - it seems that no one really know what I do. I’ve heard it all … programmer, web designer, web developer, tech support. Honestly, some of the terms even offend me - they are inaccurate and impart a sense of something I am not.

When I first started teaching, I did it as much for altruistic reasons as to fulfill a need. I’ve been in this business for 13 years now. I’ve employed over 200 individuals in various capacities and in all those years my biggest problem has always been finding the individuals who had the creative capability to design, the logical knowledge to code, and yet the global perspective to understand how to put everything together. So I guess you can sort of say that I began teaching partly for self-serving purposes.

First off, I guess I need to clarify this title “Designer, Developer or Deity”.

A web designer is a creatively gifted person who has the knack to piece together the visual design.

A web developer is a logically minded person who can turn a visual design into programming code and bring the visual design into reality.

A webmaster is someone we often overlook. A webmaster is, for all intensive purposes, a jack-of-all-trades largely charged with maintenance - someone who knows design, code, networking, databases and can do it consistently as needed.

A web architect is that rare person who seems to know everything - server administration, coding in multiple languages, graphics, multimedia - and more than that, it’s that individual that can be fluent in all of those areas, see the big picture, manage the project, and yet still get his or her hands dirty doing it.

My goal in teaching is to create web architects.  I’m not saying there is anything wrong with being any of the other three, but if knowledge is the key to success, doesn’t it seem like you’d want to learn as much as you possibly can while you have the resources (and more than that, the instructors who want you to learn it and can help you learn it) at your disposal.  I guess what I’m really saying is that while you are a student at AiLV (or anywhere), it would make sense to get as much out of it as you can.

In my own classes, I often make “recommendations” to students - something that isn’t required insofar as the syllabus, but are things that students with interest in pursuing more knowledge in a specific area can do so.  An example is that recently (and in the past) I’ve recommended that all of my Net Broadcasting students download, install and play around with Windows Media Encoder.  Why not?  It’s free, it’s very easy to learn, it’s free, on a broader scale it can help develop a better understanding of streaming, and did I mention - it’s free.  To me, if something is free, why not learn it?  It’s not because I am an huge proponent of Microsoft products (quite the contrary as many of you know), it’s because it has important impacts on one’s understanding of a bigger picture.

Yet, to my knowledge, out of some 30 students that have taken Net Broadcasting, I can count the number that bothered to on my hand.  And you know what?  Those are the ones who excel.  Why? It’s not because they followed my general recommendation, it’s because they did it and learned from the experience.

A lot of students will just sit in class and listen and learn the basic material the instructor hands out - maybe do the assignments, maybe they’ll even take it a step further.  But once the student hits a brick wall because of some errant mistake, the education stops there.  Bad practice!  I urge students to make mistakes, cause errors to happen, and then use the fundamentals of what has been learned to solve the problem.  In 13 years of programming, I’ve learned that probably the best way to solve a problem is to learn by making the mistakes because I can almost guarantee that if you never made one, you won’t know how to fix it when it does happen, but if you force the mistake to happen, you’ll rarely make it again.

But I digress.  My main point is - take from your education what you can - strive to be the best that you can be.  It’s not so much a matter of grades - it’s what you get out of it and are able to do with it in the professional world that matters.  In any case, if you strive to succeed in the IMD world, I recommend that by the time you graduate you know at the very least:

Web Designers
A web designer should know:

• Fundamentals of user-centered design,
• excellent Photoshop and Illustrator skills,
• comprehensive understanding of Flash (stage, timeline, vector animation, tweening),
• color schemes,
• fundamental HTML and XHTML,
• fundamental CSS,
• at least once build a web site that has a basic template design but has at least 20 pages,
• fundamental understanding of streaming

Web Developers
A web developer should know:

• Comprehensive understanding of usability engineering (including design and testing),
• good Photoshop skills,
• comprehensive understanding of HTML and XHTML,
• comprehensive understanding of CSS,
• extensive practice with Javascript,
• some server-side scripting (at least 2 of PHP, ASP 3.0, ASP.NET, Cold Fusion or Ruby),
• fundamental understanding of databases (tables and structured query language) and how to use them with server-side scripting,
• fundamentals of streaming,
• fundamentals of networks (what is HTTP, what is SSL, how do they work),
• basics of SEO (including Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools),
• good comprehension of XML (including RSS, Atom, DTDs and namespaces),
• basics of AJAX

Webmasters
All of the above (both web developer and web designer) plus:

• comprehensive understanding of networking,
• server administration (Apache or IIS),
• developed understanding of databases (basic administration),
• understanding of hosting environments,
• understanding of DNS,
• fundamentals of mail administration,
• good understanding of ActionScripting

Web Architects
All of the above (all 3) plus:

• extensive understanding of AJAX,
• extensive understanding of XML and DOM,
• at least 3 server-side languages and possibly an additional programming language,
• database administration and architecture (all aspects of normalization),
• mixed-environment architecture,
• extensive practice with SEO
• network topology,
• basics of UML,
• comprehensive understanding of Web 2.0

That’s it, that’s my rant.  Take from it what you will - I hope to see you all succeed!

Please note that this rant is entirely my opinion and does not necessarily express the opinion of the Art Institute of Las Vegs, Art Institutes or EDMC.