Gilles Vandenoostende

Meditations on the nature of Form and Function

Category: rant

Selling progressive enhancement to conservative clients

Consider the following scenario: you’re asked to design and develop a website for a big client. It’s a large company, with probably thousands of employees. A bank, for example, or a large pharmaceutical company. Or maybe it’s a government contract, or a big public sector player, like public transport or the electric or gas company.

What all of these clients have in common, is that 9 times out of 10 they’ll all be lorded over by a restrictive and overly protective IT department, who only updates their software and hardware every other decade. Which means the client will be looking at your work through the shit-tinted goggles of IE6…

.NET webdeveloper? Want to work at Proximity BBDO? DON’T do these

Show us all your pretty Microsoft Certifications! They’re like official and stuff and require you to sit through a written exam and everything! This one here says I can use MS Office, and this one says I’m an Microsoft Certified Webservice Developer! Just because I’ve never actually ever written a webservice doesn’t mean the certificate’s meaningless right?

Adobe MAX 2009 Finalist