[thelist] web designers unique? (was: Filling up timesheets - good or bad?)

[aardvark]

> From: Erika Meyer <erika at seastorm.com>
>
> >i did concert promotions for five years...
> did you fill out a task chart?

um, yeah, but not your standard corporate gant-chart type thing, 
but yes... you can't do a quarter-million dollar event with 50 
vendors, 30,000 concert-goers, and 300 staff without some form of 
chart...

> >in many cases, i did them all at once, on what should have been
> >bigger budget projects...
> -- did you fill out task charts?

yep... oh, and timesheets...

> I am fimiliar with I Ching, the Tao Te Ching and books like that. 
> I've practiced T'ai Chi.  I watch Pokemon, too.  All these are about 
> the yin and yang and art of life and war, which is very much like the 
> world we work in.

i have a psyduck keychain...

> The warrior thing makes more sense to me as a web designer than it 
> did when I worked as a bartender and even as a teacher which is more 
> similar in terms of the complexity.
> 
> Web design requires a lot of both logical and creative skills.  But I 
> think a lot of the 'nija warrior' (or Tao) has to do with the 
> political intricacies that surround the creation and growth of web 
> sites.  Everything is a balancing act:
> 
> Political & business stuff aside, the raw technical stuff is a 
> balancing act on it's own:
> creative vs. logical
> chaos vs. order
> audience vs. client
> image vs. word
> graphic design vs. usability  (etc.)

did i ever mention that i was an architecture major for 2 years?  i 
did a year's worth of interning as well... and let me tell you, *that's* 
a hella blend of creative/logical, chaos/order, audience/client, 
etc.... given the way people use space, and all the billions of 
regulations on buildings (in New York state, you can build a 
cinderblock box, and that's it)...

i'm still trying to understand why so many of us, and others, think 
we are a different breed...

> Not that this has much to do with task charts... except that it takes 
> a special kind of person to take this all on. (Not to mention the 
> pace everything moves at) It is not a job for the timid, or for those 
> who need a lot of guidance in everything they do.

i would think being an architect would be more intimidating... if my 
site crashes, i reboot... if my building crashes, i have to hire 50 
new contracters...

> As a teacher, I ALWAYS asked my students for feedback on how my 
> methods and processes worked for them.  I made sure they could 
> respond in such a way that they felt safe about it, that it would not 
> affect their grade, etc.

hah... i don't think i would have been one of your favorite students...

> I've yet to find a manager who will do this.
> There's some kind of assumption that the manager knows what is best, 
> because he/she is in some kind of 'superior' position.
[...] 
> (uh... did the subject line change?)

oh, yeah... i see now you were bringing it back to timesheets and 
such... sorry, i was bitching about something new...