Re: FN-FORUM Skills summary on Freelancers.net

date posted 8th March 2000 08:07

Dan Winchester wrote:

>I would be interested to know how recruiters feel as well. The thing
>about the web that is so empowering, is that it doesn't take too long
>to grasp the concept. Then it's just a matter of looking at how other
>people do it. You can become quite accomplished without any formal
>training at all. Is this something recruiters weigh into their
>desicions?

From discussions I've had on other lists, recruiters do eventually get
round to realising that it is about a capacity to learn on the fly rather
than what you know (or porport to know). There is simply too much to know,
even when confined to a narrow niche. This means nobody can have all the
information in their own head to be able to create optimum solutions: they
need to be able to draw upon the combined resources of a community.

This is one of the great advantages of working with Dreamweaver because it
is a high level open source environment where once you have an inkling of
what you want to do, you can ask questions on a list serve or "do the
rounds" to find appropriate examples on the Web, which you can either use
directly or customise for your own purpose.

It is this openness and the altruistic sharing of techniques that make
applications successful. This was realised early on with HyperCard, where
the openness and sharing of scripts and techniques caused this product to
lay the foundations for the multimedia industry that we know today.

The only issue I take with Dan's comments is when he says that it doesn't
take long to grasp the concepts. In my experience this is the biggest
hurdle to cross. Concepts cannot be explained or described easily and it
requires quite dramatic paradigm shifts to get into the right mind sets to
be able to produce effective solutions (as opposed to eye candy gimmickery).

peter
http://www.avatarnets.com