collegewebeditor.com

Interview: Daniel M. Frommelt, The University of Wisconsin-Platteville’s World Wide Web Coordinator

Karine Joly

World Wide Web Coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, Daniel M. Frommelt is a recognized expert and a strong advocate of Web standards and accessibility. Since 2003 he has presented and written about these topics on many occasions including his recent presentation “Conversion to Web Standards” at HighEdWebDev 05 in Rochester, NY. At the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, Daniel reports to the Chief Information Officer in the Information Services Department and is responsible for the 41,000 pages composing the Web presence of the university. As astonishing as it may look, all these pages are generated manually using a text editor.

1) What’s your background? What did you do before becoming a higher ed web pro?

I have a BA in History, from Loras College in Dubuque, IA. My occupational experience is in management and publishing. Immediately prior to working as the webmaster for the university, I ran a children’s educational book publishing company in Rapid City, SD. My experience of getting the publishing company’s website online and the opportunity to move closer to home were major contributing factors in taking the position as the webmaster at University of Wisconsin-Platteville.

2) What’s your biggest achievement as a higher ed web pro?

My biggest achievements all have to do with Web Standards. I was asked to present on Web Standards at the WebdevShare conference at Indiana University in 2003. This was the very first national web development conference I attended. I met the keynote speaker, Jeffrey Zeldman, and had a wonderful time discussing the topic with him. My presentation on Web Standards was about re-building the Slashdot website to be compliant with Web Standards.

The presentation ended up winning “Best in Track Presentation” and also the “Prestigue Award for Best Conference Presentation.” After that I was asked by Jeffrey Zeldman to publish my Slashdot example on A List Apart. The article turned into two articles, and both were Slashdotted.

Since that time, I have been invited to present 29 times on Web Standards and web accessibility and have won numerous awards. I have been a keynote speaker for Penn State, have even been video recorded by Web Accessibility for All, have spent a day with Eric Meyer discussing accessibility and CSS at Iowa State, and have written a total of four articles for A List Apart.

My achievement is simply trying to bring web standards to the larger web community. The biggest compliment was when Slashdot finally converted their website to utilize Web Standards!

3) What’s the most difficult part of your job?

The thing that is the most difficult is to try to figure out what request is being made when an email arrives at the Web Development Office. It is even more complex since some requests come from an anonymous comment form. Frequently, an email will simply say, “This link is bad.” Another favorite is, “There is a typo on this page.” Of course there is never a mention to the URL which has the typo or for that matter, which paragraph, sentence or word.

I often joke with my students that a part of their job is to assist as a mind reader to figure out what some of the requests mean.

“My mind reading ability is not what it used to be.”

4) In your opinion, what’s the biggest challenge we face as web pros in our industry?

The World Wide Web Consortium has a term called the “web year”, which is defined as follows:
“time measured in ‘web years’ = 2.6 months”

That means that in the same time that takes the medical or automotive industry to develop new technology in twelve months, the “web community” generates the same amount of technology in 2.6 months. This means that the web moves at least FOUR TIMES FASTER than any other technology on the planet.

The biggest challenge is keeping up to the technology boom. The higher education web developers are expected to be a master of all of the new technologies, even if it came out just a week ago. That means that we must be granted research time so we can try to keep up with the technology or at least study enough of the new technology so a decision can be made if it is worth an investment of more time.

The problem is the higher education environment typically does not have a budget to allow for extra research time, and rarely has enough money to maintain the current expected level of development. This is the biggest challenge that I see facing the web community.

5) Any good advice to share with your fellow higher ed web pros?

Hire some good students. They are looking to prove themselves, and looking for experience. The web development students have an incredible benefit of actual job experience in a very political and demanding environment. That kind of training isn’t available anywhere else.

The students are also the ones who come up with the most creative ideas and solutions for some of the most difficult problems I have ever encountered. They are still learning, yes, but they have much to teach the professionals too. Give them a few difficult projects and let them help you with the discovery of the web.

6) What about a couple of good links?