Real world web standards - Scott Gledhill

Those initial stages of converting your company to web standards are much like trying to score that first kiss with the princess. You seduce them with the business benefits of web-standards development, and the rest of the arguments we have all read, written, and preached to anyone who will listen. But getting corporate web standards in place is just a sign that the real relationship is about to begin. The honeymoon is over, and now it’s time to figure out what has gone wrong and why the prince and princess now seem to be constantly bickering - when they were meant to live happily ever after.

Scott draws on his experiences leading the development of eight large media web sites for News Digital Media to examine the ideals of web standards and how they translate within a large organisation. Learn how to make web standards work for you, when rules must be broken and how to deliver a final product that meets deadlines and still keeps project teams happy.

Scott has had over 6 years experience developing websites in large corporate environments. Most recently, his role was Web Technology Strategist at News Digital Media (NDM) in Sydney, involving the strategy and education of best practice web development across the company.

He has lead several major redesigns of NDM websites, converting them from legacy table based layouts to standards compliant, accessible and search engine friendly websites. In a company of over 500 employees this can incorporate its share of challenges and rewards.

Scott’s current role is co-founder of molt:n digital, a Sydney based web consultancy. In his spare time he finds time to blog about SEO, accessibility and all things web standards on his website, standardzilla.com.

Licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).