Boagworld, my favorite web developer podcast, has a juicy forum topic active right now — tips for new web designers. Here’s more or less what I wrote for it.

1. Learn as much as you can – and plan on keeping that up for the rest of your professional life. You can learn in whatever way suits you best. My preferred venues are books for new skills and RSS feeds for staying on top of the latest. But some like online tutorials, others classes, and still others prefer trial-and-error.

2. Devote time almost every day to following web design technologies and trends. RSS feeds, Twitter, email newsletters…. Again it’s whatever suits you best. Just don’t overwhelm yourself. Whenever I subscribe to a new RSS feed, I unsubscribe from another.

3. Understand the main skills involved in creating an excellent website. You certainly don’t have to master them all, but it’s good to have a grasp on what they really are and how they overlap. The primary skills for almost all sites are content creation, standards-based coding, design, and keeping the site current. For larger sites, they expand to project management, programming and information architecture.

4. Of these skills, know your strength in each. In areas where you’re weak, either work with someone who has them or develop them in yourself.

5. Follow your passion. There are many ways to grow within web development, so once you have basic mastery in the broad range of skills (within your abilities, of course), develop yourself in the areas that interest you most.

BarCamp Nashville. Such an unlikely place for my demographic. Heaven knows I had my doubts as I hauled myself out of bed at the crack of dawn on a gorgeous Saturday in October. But I told myself I could leave right away if it didn’t feel right, and ended up staying until close to the end.

For those of you scratching your heads, saying WhatWhat Nashville, I sympathize. Personally, I don’t do bars or camping. That leaves Nashville, and there’s a lot in Nashville I don’t do either. If I hadn’t gotten so much out of its kindred event, PodCamp Nashville, I wouldn’t have even considered it. But it turns out it’s an open source geek fest – somewhere between a formal conference for gear-heads and a happening.

Highlights for me:

• The people. Lots of smiling, friendly techies. The majority young… male… white… etc. But still a good representation of females, plus a modest representation of boomers, and, more significant, a sense of welcome for all.
• Great schwag. Is that how you spell it? My generation once called this stuff freebies. I’d brought my knitting in my backpack, but immediately transferred it to the excellent tote. It’s a keeper.
• Decent coffee, plus unsweet ice tea (my favorite) and yummy muffins.
• Hanging out with my web diva buddies. They came in force.
• Fabulous presentation on Public Relations 2.0 (“The Deer Have Guns Now”). If I don’t see it recapped elsewhere, I’ll do it myself.

Things I hope to see next year:

• More women speakers (not just in a session about women in technology, though that was a great start).
• Same venue. Parking aside, I liked it more than PodCamp’s Cannery Ballroom.
• Sessions on Drupal. If there were any, I couldn’t tell. But the site was done in Drupal and Centre{Source} was one of the main sponsors, so perhaps there were and I missed them.

Speaking of sponsors, egad were they generous. The whole thing was free, and they had wonderful prizes. So while I don’t usually do this, here’s a shout out to the sponsors I remember (in no particular order):

• Griffin Technology (the amazing Dave Delaney’s new gig)
• Centre{Source}
• Dolphini Networks
• Emma
• Zoe Creative Services

And of course a big round of applause for all the people who made this happen. You all don’t just rock. You are movers and shakers. I’m even giving Twitter a second chance, thanks to you.

*For those wondering about #bcn08, it’s a Twitter thing.

Gerry McGovern once again hits the nail on the head — this time in Intranets are not information dumps. I couldn’t agree more. “The ‘top serious obstacles’ … lie with the intranet teams themselves who see their intranets as this vague way to ‘distribute information’, rather than make the organization more efficient and productive.”

The other misconception I run into with some frequency is that intranets are merely static collections of links to a random hodge-podge of applications and websites that might (or might not) be useful to staff.

Both of these misconceptions seem to stem primarily from those who have never seen, much less worked with, a real intranet. Unlike the web, an intranet almost by definition has limited access — typically requiring authentication to view it. Thus most people vaguely conceive them to be public websites adapted for insiders. While there might be a small component of this (e.g. directories and search engines), the good intranets I have seen are fundamentally different.  All they really have in common with public websites is the use of a browser.  Typically they are much more dynamic and application driven than a standard website.

For those wanting to learn how to build a great intranet, the best starting place in my opinion is the Nielsen Norman Group’s Intranet Design Annual.