July ABCs of Web Design Newsletter

Your Moderator Theresa Wilkinson

(theresaw@columbus.rr.com)

In this month’s newsletter –

*Introductory comments

*Question of the month

*Wrap up

Introductory comments

Due to computer problems, my brother having cancer, and getting laid off once again, I am a little slow getting back into getting my newsletters out. Good news though - my brother had a successful surgery to remove his cancerous liver and is on a donor list for a new one, and I have a job! Not only a job but a web job! I am designing and will soon build a database driven site. Of course there will be the challenge to optimize this site - so look for an upcoming article on this. I am thinking of paying for placement on this one so it should be interesting to see how much traffic and leads I can get off search engines. This will be a challenge and I love challenges! On to the question…

Question of the month

Question This month's questions comes from Brian Baddour of the Northeast Ohio Chapter STC (web committee), he writes "Having geography and a web focus in common, I'd like to ask you about Mentoring itself. To wit, I need a mentoring mentor. Mentoring initiatives both at my old high school and even in our STC chapter fizzled! Perhaps it did so because the program was forced on people who didn't have so many questions so frequently.

By contrast, my work environment is such that people interact rather freely. It's a smaller organization -- ~200 co-workers -- with plenty of staff meetings and open office space. I asked many different people questions earlier in my tenure, and now am sought out for knowledge by newbies. Is there a critical mass, or some environment in which mentoring becomes more useful or efficient than free interaction? Or are they the same thing?

Meantime, another aside: My price for advice in the "two-way mentor-protégé relationship" is different than some of yours: bartering (example: free web advice in return for a free haircut), cross-training (be my SME and I'll fix your browser problem), and best of all, flattery which finds its way to my boss shortly before my performance review."

Answer: Great question. I guess the way you set up mentoring all depends on you and the people that you want to mentor. I do everything via email because that works best for me. Also, most of the people I mentor do not live or work anywhere near me (FL, TX, and NC right now) so email is the best and cheapest way for us to communicate.

You could take and answer questions via email then put them on part of an intranet and use this as part of new employee training -- boy that would look good at review time! I also take questions via email and do a monthly newsletter off my web site and answer the questions this way and email it out to people on my list. I am planning on setting up a mentoring program for a professional organization that I am leading in a couple months. This way I have a copy of the newsletter and can refer people to these if they have the same question. Also, via email, people can contact you when they have questions. Sometimes I don't hear from people for months then everyday if they want to know something. This does not "force" people to have questions. I tried a monthly mentoring meetings but like you found out, it forces people to have questions and if they don't, they don't. I found the email thing easier especially if I can refer them to older information I already have on my site (past articles and newsletters). I hope this helps. I like your bartering system idea!

Wrap up

Finding out your brother has cancer sure puts losing a job in perspective. Sure I was bummed out that for the fourth time I was getting laid off, but my brother was fighting for his life and I just lost a job (I can get another one). I have learned to focus on the positive things I have in my life like my web column, my dogs, wonderful friends, etc. And now I have a great new job doing exactly what I have always wanted to do! Woo hoo! Thanks for reading my newsletter.

Please send all questions to theresaw@columbus.rr.com.

To see the articles from my print web column, go to http://www.w-edge.com/articles.htm

Feel free to forward this email in its entirety to anyone you feel might be interested in it.