Francis Wu joins Standoutjobs; and thoughts about web design in Montreal (16)
Last week, Francis Wu, a “web user experience designer and wantrepreneur” announced he was joining Standoutjobs’s “dream team” this week as their front-end designer.
Now, to make the transition, he wrote in the same post his own guide for web design, which I welcome, because I have been thinking web designers should step up in Montreal. If web development and getting a website to work is a requirement, I think designing the front-end is as important, if not more. This might not be essential for companies like defensio, which only needs to explain what their service is doing, but for all other startups which are based around managing, storing, and presenting information, the key for success is knowing how to present relevant information to each user. I am not talking about color, fancy fonts, or photoshop effects, but notions like hierarchy, visual weight, designing pages around social objects, or progressive disclosure of relevant information etc.. In this matter, GMail won the email provider wars because of its interface, subtle and transparent use of AJAX, threaded conversations and tags. The 1Gb storage was also groundbreaking at the time, but Yahoo and Live have also reached and gone beyond Gmail’s offer and haven’t managed since then to regain market shares. Now, regarding Montreal, there are lots of ressources and events for web developers and entrepreneurs, but I haven’t been able to see anything concerning web designers. There is the Web Development Book Club though, people have assumed mistakingly it’s for programmers and ruby developers, although it’s aimed for web designers and developers.
I am now looking at Patrick Tanguay, Francis Wu or people like Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino if they could do something about it. I would like to remind that 4 months ago, Ruby on Rails development was a niche in Montreal and it only took a monthly event to see that there was in fact a big Rails community in the city.
heri, the defensio site you see is just a temporary beta site. our “real” site will go live in concert with our public launch (soon).
[...] Joining Standout Jobs got me thinking recently about the state of the online job market. Not only is it saturated with job sites and fragmented with niche job boards, but it’s also broken. Granted, I’ll shameless say that Standout Jobs is doing something interesting by bringing the Cluetrain to businesses. [...]
Ah, glad to see Standout Jobs finally got the ace they were looking for. Congrats to both parties.
Must be something in the air, because I too have found greater professional horizons to explore, and not-so-coincidentally, Standout Job was, if not the original source, a great tool in my research into the opportunity I was facing.
So thanks gang, and kudos.
Steph - you’ve piqued my curiosity. Did Standout Jobs help you in some way? Get in touch and let me know…
Ben: I was doing research on Plank Design through the local scene (people+blogs+etc) in regards to a job posting on the Plank blog.
Not really looking for a job at the time (~2 weeks ago!), but with my own curiosity being piqued by Plank’s pedigree, I quickly found my way to the video on Standout Jobs.
Warren’s video was a fantastic way to meet the team before I decided to apply, though for another position than the one showcased on Standout Jobs. We clicked and yadi yadi yada, we signed our contract last Friday. :)
But I’ve also been watching your own progress over the past few months, thanks in part to Heri’s blogging extraordinaire.
Having been on both sides of the hiring process myself, it’s a breath of fresh air to see a recruiting agency having the smarts to treat people as valuable assets, taking the time to actually understand what the posting is about in the first place before pitching it to the hordes.
I actually caught myself sending a few friends to some of the other featured videos, such as the one for Akoha.
:)
Steph - congrats on signing up with Plank. They’re an awesome team and do great work. I’ve know Warren for almost 10 years…
If only he’d participate more in the larger community! Which I hassle him about constantly…
Ben: Thanks. Couldn’t be more excited.
re: involvement: I don’t want to speak for Warren, but he seems to be quite a passionate and dedicated man, which has a tendency to lead to great horizons and a full calendar. ;)
On the other hand, I will soon be hoping to bring the my share of the Plank variable to the great Montreal equation through my own involvement.
Although I started my web dev career in Montreal in the *early days* (~94, probably in the first 100 clients of Austin Hill’s Infobahnos), after 5 years in Vancouver then 5 at McGill, I’ve only recently rediscovered the vibrant Montreal crowd, thanks again mostly to Montreal Tech Watch.
That’s what I’ve always loved about Mtl. A great big city, with the conviviality of a small village, and all the great social ramification that this implies.
So although being the happy dad of 3 wonderful boys keeps me busy outside of work too, I’m definitely looking forward to involving myself in the great events and projects that notre belle ville has to offer.
And if I gauge by what I see on the web (blogs/FB/etc), I’m in for a treat, because there some tremendous people and projects to collaborate with. You guys are making it easy to want to. :)
You might be the first one at Plank with kids…Make sure they run around that office on a regular basis and wreak havoc!
I wish you the best of luck at Plank, and I’m glad that Warren’s video with us had some amount of impact. Even if it just piqued your interest a bit, that’s precisely what it’s meant to do - find the passive candidate, attract them to a company (whether the job in the video is the right one or not) and give candidates the chance to reach back to companies with more information in their pockets.
[...] a bit late in announcing this (having been “scooped” by Heri at MontrealTechWatch), but nonetheless we’re very pleased to announce that Francis Wu is joining the Standout Jobs [...]
Ben: re:kids: I”l be sure to bring them in as… uh, consultants? ;p
Steph - sure. I’m already teaching my 3 year old son Ruby on Rails … I figure he’ll be up to speed before we find someone to join our team (hint, hint people…)
[...] karlyboy3000 wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptNow, to make the transition, he wrote in the same post his own guide for web design, which I welcome, because I have been thinking web designers should step up in Montreal. If web development and getting a website to work is a … [...]
Such a lively discussion! I’m just going to say, I’m very happy that Stephane is joining our team. He’s that perfect addition we have been looking for.
Well, RoR is child’s play (in the best possible sense, not the pejorative one), but if you want to get him started with programming, Scratch is a nice way to go: http://scratch.mit.edu/
PS: I can’t help but we’re hijacking Heri’s comments. :p
You can find my a link to my FB account here if you want to: http://tekartist.org/more/ (bottom).
I forgot about this lively discussion but thanx stephdau
hope you will come at the next blitzweekend. barcampcanada1 will be a hit too
@Heri: I would have loved to attend tonight’s BarCamp @ Laika, but I have to alpha parent while my wife’s at work… :(
Soon, very soon…
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