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Molly Holzschlag: Spreading The Good Word
Tonight I attended An Evening With Molly Holzschlag, a laid-back, casual discussion with one of the leading figures in the Web industry.
I first met Molly in 2005, at a conference in Sydney called “Web Essentials”. I remember it distinctly because that same day she had delivered a passionate, inspiring, opening keynote presentation titled The State Of The Web (a talk you can listen to while watching the slides, thanks to Patrick Lauke).
At the very beginning of Molly’s talk, I suddenly felt like she was speaking directly to me. She spoke about “finding your place on the Web” — what our role is, and where we fit in. At the time I was trying very hard to wave the web standards flag within an enormous organisation that cared not one iota about developing best practice solutions for its clients.
So it was with some trepidation that I sheepishly approached Molly at the afternoon book signing, hoping that she might sign my copy of The Zen of CSS Design and trying not to gush. And here I met a person who was passionate, approachable and driven to educate, promote and effect real change at the developer level and at the corporate level. She was brash and funny and refused to be placed up on a stool, and while I might have approached her as somewhat of an idol, I left thinking of her as a friend. (Incidentally, on the same day I also met the guys from SitePoint, and the question “What is your place on the Web?” was answered a month later when I joined the team as a technical editor.)
Two and a half years on, Molly is still doing what she does — educating, inspiring, advocating and lobbying. She might be a little more jaded about the people and parties concerned (she has been battling many highly political issues lately) but her belief in the Web as a fundamental medium of change that is owned by the people is unchanged, and her optimism unwavering.
If you work on the Web and you ever get the chance to meet Molly or see her speak, then I highly encourage you to take that opportunity. If you’re in New Zealand, Molly is speaking at Webstock next week.
Thanks everyone for coming along tonight, and thanks again Molly for giving me the jolt of motivation that I needed to get enthusiastic about the Web again. It really is an amazing medium that is easy to take for granted.
Tags: molly, wsgCareer And Identity
I used to really struggle with my identity in my early 20s. I’ve read that males associate their identity with their career more strongly than females, and for me this is certainly true.
At the first Web Directions conference I attended in 2005, Molly Holzchlag highlighted in her presentation the various different roles that exist for people working on the Web – designer, developer, information architect, copywriter, usability specialist, site manager, content producer… the list is endless, and her point resonated with me — that we are all striving to find “our place on the Web”. At the time I was working for one of the largest technology-based companies in the world, and yet I was performing none of these roles. I was working as a “consultant”, and had difficulty explaining what that was to people, largely because it kept changing under my feet. When I went looking for my first job, this variety is what I was after. But now that I knew I wanted to work on the Web, it was growing tired.
It’s not that I have ever been uncomfortable with who I am. I knew from a very early age what I valued in life, where I stood on certain political matters, what I was good at (and what I was not) and what I was interested in. But this spectrum of topics always seemed so varied, and my interests so diverse, that eventually I began to feel like a “jack of all trades but master of none”. And I equated being a master of nothing with having a lack of identity.
My education taught me how to think methodically, and it taught me how to drink methodically, too. In hindsight, though, it didn’t really teach me how to learn, which is the one thing I would have expected to come away with (I achieved this later in life by reading blogs and a few key books). The school of engineering at the University of Adelaide at the time was very rigid, promoting memorisation and placing a high percentage of a subject’s final grade on one’s ability to regurgitate numbers and formulae on exam day.
So during my studies, the various creative activities that I was engaged in dropped off, one by one — drawing, writing, playing music (although I began listening to a lot more). Later on, in my mid 20s, I felt compelled to liberate this suppressed creativity, and consequently began to struggle pinpointing those characteristics that I defined myself by. I was reluctant to call myself a “software developer”, because I felt it did injustice to my creative skills. But I wasn’t about to proclaim myself as an “artist” when I had no portfolio, no exhibitions, and a rusty set of drawing skills which had been ignored for far too long. To address this I started a creativity web site called opinios, and let it all out there, although I’ve since ceased updating the site.
Anyway, this has been somewhat of a verbose brain dump, but my point is that these days I feel much more comfortable about my identity, and a lot of that has to do with my job. Of course every job has its rewards and its challenges, and I may not work in this role for ever. But at the moment it’s certainly a position in which I feel well utilised, and that’s as good an indicator for identifying oneself as any.
Tags: career, identity, molly, molly+holzchlag, web, webdirectionsBasketball... And the Luck of the Irish
I was eight years old when I first picked up a basketball.
I remember vividly — it was on the bitumen outdoor court at Woodville Primary School. I’d heard that practice was happening and I knew I wanted to be part of it. I’d recently discovered the NBL on television, and was giddy at the prospect of being able to play the same fast and furious sport that my heroes from the Adelaide 36ers, Al Green, Mark Davis and Darryl Pearce, played.
By the time I reached high school I was playing three times a week — for a local church, my school as well as the local district league, the Forrestville Eagles — as well as training twice a week. I was never good enough to make the Division 1 team at Forrestville, but was happy enough throughout my teens to play in Divisions 2 and 3 and get more court time. By this stage I had convinced my father to erect a hoop, with backboard, on the side of our house, and spent more time shooting baskets in the driveway than studying.
At high school I was introduced to NBA basketball, and began following the rise and rise of such superstar legends of the game as Larry Bird, Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Julius ‘Dr J’ Irving. Here was a league that took both talent and entertainment to a new level.
When Michael Jordan soared onto the screen, my love for the game bordered on obsessive, and I decided there and then that I absolutely had to make it to an NBA game, one day.
Last night, 18 years later, I got that chance. Brendon and I drove in to San Antonio to watch the Spurs host the Boston Celtics, the team with which I’d always had a soft spot for since following Larry Bird and living in Massachusetts in my early twenties. Prior to these two teams meeting, the Spurs had beaten the Celtics 18 times in a row. The Spurs had won their past 13 games, and were sitting in third position on the ladder.
My beloved Celtics were not having quite as successful a season, flailing at the very bottom of the Eastern Conference. And they were playing the Spurs at home. It was not looking promising, but at least I was going to be there in the flesh when my team got its butt kicked.
However, defying all odds and everyone’s expectations (and much to the disappointment of the sell-out crowd of Spurs fans), the Celtics managed to pull off a massive upset and win by six points in an exciting nailbiter that had Brendon and I cheering in a sea of silence. The game had its scrappy moments, but it also had the occasional flash of NBA showtime (usually from the Spurs’ Tim Duncan) and was thoroughly entertaining.
Unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to take my video camera in to the game, so had to settle for taking a few snaps with a disposable camera. When I get round to getting the film developed, I’ll scan them in and post them. Photographic mementos aside, I was delighted with the result.
Of course, with their dismal record this year, the Celtics are still at the bottom of the ladder. But on this one game they came through for me, and I went home a happy man. I’d like to think that my presence contributed a small part to the Celtics pulling out their best, but chances are that it had more to do with their Irish heritage and the game coinciding with St. Patrick’s day. But you never know.
Scout will definitely grow up to be a Celtics fan.
Tags: celtics, dream, nba, sanantonio, spurs, texas
Matthew Magain works as the manager for online media at