George Olsen

Dylan Foley has thorough considerations of the Web Standards Project and the recent activity on that site. He apologizes to me for stating that of the members of the WSP nobody had mentioned the recent events. No harm no foul Dylan. As far as anyone on that list having anything to do with WSP decisions, I’ve no idea. Jeff Zeldman appears to be going it alone. That’s his perogative as the current Group Leader. I do have one correction though—Dylan states “since it’s inception, he has been the public face of the WaSP and it’s Group Leader”—which is incorrect. George Olsen did the heavy lifting as the Leader who got WSP off the ground those years ago.

There have been some mishaps for WebStandards.org over the years – the initial signup-for-support database was lost if I remember correctly – and various discussion lists which were once vital are nowhere to be found on the site. I think that there’s still a role for an advocacy organization to champion Jane Q. Developer. Luckily, WSP is only hibernating—it’s not dead.

The Creative Priority is my current side reading. It’s about the essential paradox of doing great work – you must reconcile disparate forces and harness the tension of craftspeople from different disciplines – and also get people to think beyond their narrow job scope. Hirshberg applied this principle at Nissan, but the same rules apply to web development – to the business end, to the programming end, to the artistic design end (and everything in-between). George Olsen once characterized (or maybe caricatured) these forces as suit, geek, and ponytail. Creative friction is also what makes for great community. I’m only 1/3rd of the way through – so maybe I’ll have different opinions later.