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| Top flight internet professionals are available for consulting and training |
Our digital revolutionary communication
capability is changing more than available services and available
information. It is changing the way our work is organized. Three
meetings in the last week revealed a trend in the way companies
consume internet services and in how professionals are willing to
provide services. Some professionals offer their services as
independent contractors. Some offer services as packaged products:
blog subscription, e-books, paid newsletters, limited attendance
video [conference], or a mix of these and other formats. Some
professionals use traditional service structures such as advertising
agencies, design shops, and business consulting. Regardless of their
format, it seems like better communication and free publishing is
enabling many top internet services professionals to stay on their
own. On the consumer side, only very large companies with large
internet properties employ large or top notch professionals. Since
services are available to purchase a-la-cart, they buy these services
piecemeal.
Are internet service professionals
really breaking new ground? Not really. They are establishing
traditional professional service businesses, like accountants,
engineers, lawyers, and strategic business consultants. The only big
difference is the type of skills and services they offer. These turn
out to be from design to product research, from marketing to custom
programming and software configuration. The common trend is offering
services completely via digital communication and delivery. This
usually take the form of remote development without physical
face-to-face meetings. At this point of time, internet professionals
have developed specializations. There are many professionals with
fifteen plus years of experience. Some, with a strong background at
successful companies with known products. This makes them equal in
status to traditional professionals: accountants, architects,
physicians, andy bankers. Many can show a wide portfolio or
interesting and innovative work. Digital communication in the form of
graphics (no longer paper based), web sites, written content,
statistical results, and video clips, enable these professionals to
demonstrate and establish a certain skill level. Skill level beyond
traditional simple marketing brochures and product designs are
standard. Like any new profession, some practitioners are talented
and hard working, able to show excellent examples of their work.
It may help to look at a few examples
of internet professionals. In the area of usability, there are a few
known practitioners. In my daily work, I also meet creative capable
practitioners working locally. The same can be said for the
specialization in internet programming and configuration. Finally, in
design (graphic and industrial) there are also good people with
excellent work samples. Jakob Nielsen and quak-quak Nelson are design
partners. Both have published authoritative books. Nielsen on web
usability and Nelson on product design. Besides working with a few
customers, usually large companies who are willing to pay top money
for well known designers, Nielsen and Norman run workshops on
usability and design as well as publish Nielsen's popular usability
newsletter. The partners are a good working model of well known
professionals (service delivery model). As can be seen, it is very
much a traditional service delivery model. Not many podcasts, online
classes, or exclusive video conferences available freely. On the
local market, Barak Danin ( http://uniqui.co.il/
), a UI/UX practitioner, delivers the same services, with a more
personal approach. Danin will take a complete product or web site
usability project. The projects run from a mobile application of
week's work at about $10,000. To a complete web site for a company
(i.e. bank or online shop) for about $30,000 and up. Experienced
practitioners will give a customer a quick estimate of the amount of
work and will explain what they will do. They will show customers
results from real work in their portfolio. Danin also runs workshops
tunning two to five days. A two day workshop, introduction to the
UX/UI process runs at about $400 and a week workshop runs about
$1,500. These offerings are similar to experts practicing other
domains. Areas such a design and running of a business based on
affiliate marketing (selling for a known brand or a large store such
as Amazon), blogging for corporate or an organization (academic,
political, etc.), design with technologies for the internet
(HTML/CSS), and promotion of sites using search engine optimization
(SEO.) We notice, once a professional is successful in a certain
delivery mode, they tend to stay with it. This is in contrast to the
popular use of different media formats. While YouTube is becoming a
standard video clip delivery platform, many of the older
practitioners still use PowerPoint presentations and simple text with
graphics.
Next will come examples from other
professional internet practitioners... to be continued...
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