The concepts of apprenticeship and mastership seem to not apply on the Web. When it comes to building a house, you will search for a trusted architect and carpenter, and you'll measure their credibility by means of their experience, which in turn will be a matter of the time they spent exercising their craft. On the Web, even the 16-year-old nephew of your neighbour seems to be able of doing the job. Developers tend to call themselves "engineers" without being aware of the public responsibility that this title used to come along with.

My friend and fellow web oldie Joschi wrote an article about the fine little conference he and Brian Suda put up for the first time in Island recently. I followed the development of the ideas around the conference and did back the first attempt last year on kickstarter, but sadly had to pass this year for several reasons, which may go into a separate blog post one day. For now I am sad to have missed the chance to be among the first few attendants, especially because a lot of what Joshi writes in his post mirrors stuff that's going round in my head for years now, and for me, being in the trench and doing this 'web' thing for more than twenty years now, the missing 'respect' for or the ignorance of the materials, the fabric of the web is the number one reason why so many web stuff that gets pushed out, especially in client work, is bad, shortlived, unsustainable, bloated - cheap, even if it's expensive to build.

I don't have the hybris that only because I'm working with the web for so long now I truly understand it - but as Joschi writes, we had at least the chance to grow and hone our skills along and in parallel with the grow and development of the web(technology). I have seen the rise and fall of several hyped things, while the core strengths of this still new technology are still hard to sell or are often seen as an disposable add-on, or are ignored for 'pretty' visual and superficial 'design' aspects.

So yeah, I think I would have had plenty of good discussions and a very receptive open head for the conference's topics.