FREE: View from the Trenches – Allan Kent

Here at DMXzone we like our authors to share their knowledge with you – sure, mostly it's in depth technical stuff through the tutorials, but just occasionally it's refreshing to take a step back and get some perspective on the type of circumstances they work under. See how our code gurus earn their daily bread and what they worry about in their local market.

 

Today we've got our tattooed, South African residing, PHP hero Allan Kent sharing his opinions on giving the client value for money, getting ahead of the curve, and winding editors up!

DMX: How did the jump from IT company to new media developer happen then – don't tell me, a bit of being in the right place at the right time, a lot of hard work, a bit of luck and taking your opportunities?

AK: You said it. Computer sales and support was not fun and I'd done some training courses while at university, so when the chance for me and my, now business partner, to teach at a training center we jumped at the chance.

There we taught a guy who worked for Saatchi & Saatchi, an advertising company in South Africa. They were looking at starting an interactive division; so two of them came on an intro to programming, Web design and Flash set of courses. A job came in and they outsourced it to us – some Flash CD-ROM.

It was many, many sleepless nights and a huge learning curve in Flash, but we got it done. It was also more profit than our previous months turnover! We decided that selling PC's and driving around showing people how to make things bold in Word was rubbish, ditched the IT company and went full time on web stuff. At about the same time we got a job to do an entire database driven website that had member logins, discussion forums and news postings - all done by the client no less.

Now we're in the situation that we do 90% of our work under the Saatchi banner – but remain our own company and do some of our own gigs. We cover Web sites, Intranet stuff, multimedia CD-ROMS, Flash presentations ...

DMX: So we now know you mostly from PHP articles, but what about other parts of Web design life? Like what do standards and accessibility mean to you?

AK: Well, honestly, sometimes it might mean a bit more work or irritation, but we use it because it's the future. Sometimes, in the market we're in – South Africa – some of our clients couldn't care less (well depending on who they are – U.S. government institutions have to comply with Section 503), but it's going to get more mainstream, there's no dodging the issue. I reckon let's get into the habit of just doing it right now, so that when it becomes a problem and every other web company in SA are wondering what this accessibility thing is about, we'll be down the road, over the hill and putting our feet up by the pool!

Would you believe I actually got really switched onto accessibility by Bruce (previous content editor on DMXzone)? I'd been writing some articles on phpbuilder, and then I got headhunted to write some stuff for Wrox. When glasshaus opened (a sister imprint of Wrox) I got passed to them ... Bruce was with glasshaus and in talking with him I started to see the possibilities.

The word is starting to spread about accessibility ­– people like Bruce, and DMXzone regulars like Molly and Rachel, are spreading the word, but I think for some Web developers it's still a bit of a gray area.

Still sometimes that gives you a competitive advantage – I've helped clients understand accessibility and that make us look good. Besides I want to get to the pool before the other guys!

DMX: Educating clients - that sounds like a complaint I've heard a lot.

AK: Oh yes! We're seeing more and more web companies jumping on the bandwagon and selling a really poor product/service. I've heard about sites costing a couple of thousand $U.S. that have free generic buttons, cheapskate design that's going to LOSE the client business and search functions that don't work.

Clients sometimes just look at the price quoted and don't understand that you get what you pay for. Here at Lodestone.co.za we spend a lot of time laying out our quotes so the client can see and understand exactly what they're going to get and why! We also spend sometime creating a good portfolio to demonstrate our wares.

Check out www.incline.co.za – they're friends of ours and we enjoy helping them out. Their website is in a constant state of flux as we play around with different ideas, but some day it's going to make a great exhibition site for us.