For the last two nights, Critical Mass has run what are effectively recruiting job fairs over at the Roundup Centre.

They’re weird things. We’d done them before when we were recruiting for a planned move to Toronto (which sadly didn’t come to fruition, only because the potential client ended up staying with their incumbent agency). I didn’t do the Toronto sessions, but I’d heard they were both a great success and utter mayhem.

We’re not trying to populate a Toronto office right now — we’re seeing more work running through the office than we’ve seen in a couple of years. Hence, the need to attract a lot of people.

We held this at the Roundup Centre at the Stampede grounds, in the Palomino Room. We invited about 250 people over two nights. It wasn’t easy.

From 18:00 to 21:00 on Tuesday and Wednesday, save for a 45 minute break during a presentation from our execs, we talked to people of all backgrounds looking to work for Critical Mass.

What really stood out for me was that these weren’t people who were window shopping (admittedly, there have be some who were) — they wanted to work for us. Despite being told that Critical Mass is one of the best in the industry (I loathe saying we’re on top), we don’t see it.

Calgary has a weird way of isolating us from all the weirdness that happens in other cities where the Agency Game is played hard. Within Calgary, we’re not even well-known. Most people I talk to haven’t even heard of us.

So when 250 people come out, trying to obtain a position with us, it really gives you pause. We’re not the small startup that had people working long shifts to pull off minor miracles all the time. We’ve matured. We’ve gotten solid and steady. We’ve got a client list that amazes us — how did we get them? And how did all of these people hear of us?

I honestly have no idea how many people I talked to. Some were good. A few got the Magic Card that will lead to an interview. Most, sadly, didn’t quite make the grade — at least for me. As I’ve learned over the last year or so, it takes a particular person to do web development.

I had a few people, though — and not just web developers — who knew they weren’t going to make the grade, and how they could get hired. A quick “thank you� to those who did ask — you did the right thing. That sort of interest will get you noticed.

If you want to work at Critical Mass — as a web developer, mind you — here’s a few things I’ll suggest:

• Delete your WYSIWYG. If all you know is how to do page layout with Dreamweaver, you won’t be able to handle the work here. Learn to code by hand. It sounds archaic, but here’s the simple reason: if you don’t know how it works, you’ll never be able to handle the hard stuff.
• Learn the whys of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Just reading the specifications won’t do it. You need to know what these technologies are, why they exist, how they work on their own and in concert with each other. You don’t need to master them — though that’s a plus — but you do need to understand them.
• Read up on the trends. Just saying the words “web standardsâ€? won’t get you a job. Being able to tell us, in detail, how CSS Zen Garden works probably will.
• Prove to us that you can build a good user interface. It doesn’t have to look good, but it does have to work properly.

And above all, gumption will get you somewhere. Especially that guy who said he’d recode his site in CSS overnight. We can’t wait to see it.

I cannot praise Jeremy Zawodny enough for having posted a very concise POV on respect for web developers.

It’s not like we’re a collection of haphazard Rodney Dangerfields — we’re just largely ignored. Web development isn’t “cool�. We don’t build business apps (though we could), we don’t deal with databases (though many of us know how), and we don’t build Flash applications (though some of us have the skills to make you think we did).

Yet we’re the ones who make the pages you see. We’re the ones who sit down and figure out how to make the CSS, JavaScript, and HTML work together in a choreographed ballet of client-side code.

You might not think about it, but some of those fancy sites you’ve used (Jeremy mentions a couple of them) are more than meets the eye.

You might not know that we’re here, but so long as you’re having a great web experience, you’re welcome.

Thanks for the notes, Jeremy! I’m sure there are a lot who appreciate it.

As if it’s not enough that Google Desktop regularly saves my heiny by finding long-lost files (I mean, really, why is it that Microsoft created two My Documents directories in XP, and then seems to randomly choose between the two?) or digging out an obscure email from Outlook (when you’ve got 100,000+ messages, a real-time index is a necessity). Last week, Google saved my butt again.

I was meeting up with Scott after the first day of Web Design World, where we’d go out for something to eat, chat, and catch up. (It’s been a couple months since he left Critical Mass for Yahoo.) Problem: I knew only one restaurant in all of San Francisco, and it wasn’t Japanese. Tradition said sushi.

Luckily for me, Amy knows San Francisco quite well. Or at least, used to. When I called her for a place to go, she couldn’t remember the name. Only that it was in Japantown, about a five minute drive from my hotel. I had no idea where Japantown was.

She had managed to give me a couple of hints. First, there was a “roof like a temple�, and it was near Geary and Fillmore. That was about it. Then, just before I hung up, she blurted out: “Sushi Buni�. It was supposedly the oldest sushi boat restaurant in North America.

After the last session of the day, I retreated to my room to wait for Scott (driving in from Sunnyvale takes a while). I dove into Google, looking for “sushi buni“. Nada. I tried “Japantown�. Gave me a little info, but nothing concrete enough with which to direct our evening.

I resorted to Google Local, looking for “japanese restaurants“. It gave me a plethora of restaurants, but nothing that seemed to fit the name of “sushi buni�. I tried several ZIP codes, each to no avail.

Yes, I’m a persistent searcher.

I switched to Google Maps, a service that continues to impress me the more I use it. I found Geary and Fillmore, though couldn’t tell I was around Japantown. This is where Google saved the day.

Just above the map search field is a link to “Local Search�. In a much poorer system, this would take you away from the map, and start you afresh. Google has the smarts to know that you just spent a lot of time localizing yourself already, and this is where you want to search.

“Sushi buni� still turned up nothing. But “japanese restaurant� produced a plethora of hits. Still none for “sushi buni�. There was one for “Mifune�, which seemed to me maybe the place Amy had been suggesting. It was in Japan Center, which she had also mentioned, and seemed like a likely choice.

Scott whipped us over there, and proceeded to investigate Japan Center. It’s a mall-like edifice with many stores and several restaurants. Part of the complex includes a “roof like a temple� — a small pagoda in the open square on top. We had to be in the right place.

As we walked into the complex, we passed by several stores (all closed) and several restaurants (all open). We found Mifune, but determined that it wasn’t what we were looking for. Doubling back, we stopped at the only sushi boat restaurant: Isobune. The first sushi boat restaurant in North America. (�Isobune� means “canal boat�.)

Why didn’t this show up in the results? Google’s great, but it’s far from perfect. The website for Isobune is for the Burlingame location, and not much exists for the Japan Center location. Hence, excluded from the results. Without Google, though, I doubt we’d have found it.

For the record, Isobune is neat, though the boats move a little too fast, and the J-Pop wears on you after a while. But I was there to visit with Scott. It could have been a Bee-Gees reunion for all I would have cared.

I’ve been blogging for a number of years now, going at it hand-to-hand combat style until about a month ago, when I took the bold leap to using WordPress.

The decision to switch was made for two reasons. First, I was having major problems trying to keep up with the level of content. I was writing entries that were on average 2,000 words a shot (with some up over 10,000). Try writing an essay like that every few days. Sure, you can write about what you know, but it still takes time.

And the content was rarely what I’ve been wanting to focus on. It was mostly events in my life — boring and dreary to most. What I was wanting to do more of was the ranting about things that I’d only had a chance to do once in a while. Such a change requires a complete break from the old.

The second reason for going to WordPress was a desire to get away entirely from the creation and management of files, and more to the creation and management of content. I couldn’t care less for the structure of the directory system, so long as people are able to find and use the content.

It was about then that I had the epiphany, something echoed by Molly Holzschlag during a conversation we’d had during our run to lunch at Web Design World, and again in her “The How and Why of Blogging� session. So at least I know I’m not on crack.

Here’s the simple version: Blogs and CMS (content management systems) have far more in common than people even realize.

Here’s the more complex version: Blogs are CMS. For those of you who’ve been using tools such as TypePad, WordPress, and Movable Type, you already know what I’m talking about. For the rest of you, there’s a little something to be learned.

There are three tiers that classify most content management systems. (CMS Watch classifies them as Enterprise, Upper Tier, Mid-Market, Low-Priced, Hosted, and Open Source.) Many in the CMS field generally ignore the blog software as being too much of a point solution to do anything particularly useful.

The Tier 1 systems are the 800 pound gorillas of the industry. They include Vignette, Interwoven, and Documentum. Licences start at US$300k and go up … fast. Unless you’re dealing with huge amounts of content and have staff whose sole responsibility is the creation and maintenance of that content, chances are this is something you can skip right over.

Divisions between Tier 2 and 3 I don’t fully understand, nor do I pretend to. I’ve read materials and talked with representatives from companies that place their products in both categories, but the product set isn’t comparable. Microsoft’s Content Management Server seems to usually fall into Tier 2, as does Hot Banana. Yet Hot Banana is very close to Marqui, which seems to be Tier 3. Not to mention the near-countless other applications that get thrown into the mix.

What about blogs? Tier 4, if such a thing exists. I don’t put them in the same class for one basic reason: a lack of workflow. Blogs are meant to post information, though they’re often personal in nature. In a proper CMS, there is an approval process, where the creator is rarely the one who approves the final version for public consumption. In a blog, the author is also the approver.

Aside from that key distinction, the two systems are very similar: an interface for handling content, a repository for storing that content, and a mechanism for retrieving that content. Vastly simplified, blogs and Tier 1 systems are almost the same.

And that’s where I’ll stop the comparison. Because blogs are not Tier 1, nor will they ever be. If WordPress (my blog engine) were to move to that level of functionality, it would cease to be blog software, and become something else. And it’s the simple nature that makes blogging not only attractive, but powerful.

For large corporations, blogs are a novelty. Even though GM and Boeing have high-profile blogs by high-ranking executives, they are marketing tools. Smaller companies, though, could take advantage of the simpler nature of the blog tools by using them to publish their websites.

The benefits are clear: centralized data management, simple interfaces, control over presentation, easy setup and maintenance, and next to no cost. Forget the US$300k licence fee: WordPress is free. You pay for the bandwidth.

Versioning? No. Approval chain? Uh uh. Editorial control? Only if you show the content to an editor first. Does a small company or organization even need all that, though? Chances are, not. Most small institutions have simple needs, nothing even remotely close to what Tier 1, 2, or 3 systems provide.

The next wave of CMS is just about to roll in: blogs as a serious content management system. You won’t just see it sending out interesting comments. You’ll see it managing content in small, simple, and highly effective ways. Those who master the blog CMS will find site updates much easier, and will adapt to changing business requirements much more readily.

If you are a solutions provider looking to help a client with CMS, consider your friendly neighbourhood blog. You might be surprised what you can do.

Many years ago, I was turned onto XHTML. Admittedly, without a full understanding of why. At the time, I was hardly in a place to object or complain, and did as I was told.

In the years since then, I’ve come to appreciate the reasons: cleaner, tighter code; better compliancy with standards; better semantics; and most importantly, separation of structure and presentation.

One of the things that XHTML does well is drop support for presentational tags, such as bold, italics, and my personal favourite, font among many. Okay, yes, technically they’re still in the XHTML 1.0 specification, but they’ve been deprecated. That’s enough for me to call them unsupported.

Right now, the
tag is still supported, being wholly valid. For the last few years, I’ve sat on the fence with what to do with it. According to the W3C, who defines this stuff, it’s good. So if I’m to follow the rules, I would allow use of br.

After today’s session in “HTML to XHTMLâ€? (with Molly), I had a bit of a revelation that really sealed the deal for me. As much as others love br for solving problems, there is really no reason to use br, except for legacy reasons. Otherwise, I think it’s time for br to be retired from the active tag list.

What was the revelation? Show me the semantic meaning. Every “goodâ€? tag in XHTML has semantic meaning, offering more to the structure of the page than the content it contains. For example, p is a paragraph — there’s nothing else it could be. br is a line break — a presentational construct, nothing else. There’s nothing else it could be.

Now I know that argument isn’t wholly suitable. Under that same argument,