Are events like FullCodePress damaging to the web development community?
23 April 2009 | Russ Weakley | 9 Comments
We noticed this comment on the SitePoint blog recently, and thought it raisied some interesting questions:
“[FCP is] damaging to the industry. It’s going to give people the impression that it’s alright for some sleep deprived cowboys to knock up a site in a day.”
The way we see it, FullCodePress is not supposed to give the impression that websites are built this way in the real world – any more than Iron Chef implies that restaurant kitchens operate as they do on the show.
So what is FullCodePress about? FCP aims to promote a wide range of positive aspects about the web development community including:
- bringing individuals together to learn from each other and work as a team (having never met each other before the event)
- overcome major obstacles
- working under extreme pressure
- promoting web standards and best practices
- and most importantly, creating websites for non-profit associations – associations that do not have the resources to create websites for themselves.
Oddly enough, people often forget that a team of six people “knocking a website out in a day”, actually equates to 144 hours of total work, which may not be that far removed from the total development time for a normal small website. The difference is that all the hours are collapsed together in one sweaty, adrenalin filled 24 hour lump!
What are your thoughts. Do events like FullCodePress damage the web development community or benefit the community? Let us know!
Its all relative, you could build three website in 24hrs or you could do the first section of research for one website – “how long is a piece of string” : )
Spot on Russ. The analogy to Iron Chef is spot on. Suggesting that competitions like this where people explore what can be achieved shouldn’t happen because the entire web industry might suffer are uninformed and bordering on paranoid, IMO. If you do that bad a job convincing your clients of your worth, then maybe you need some lessons in marketing.
I’d probably be in a stretcher within a week if I had to do FCP all over again every day/night of the week!
I don’t think it’s entirely paranoid, as it’s usually an uphill battle to convince the hierarchy that websites don’t build themselves. I would suggest though that the people that are making the decisions re: hiring/funding/contracting are entirely likely to be completely oblivious to FCP anyway.
The fact of the matter is that in sheer hours alone at fairly standard market rates there’s well over $20,000 worth of work that goes into each of these websites. I don’t expect anyone would reasonably expect real world projects to be run at all like this.
Also people should keep in mind that over 90% of websites currently out do not involve specialist UX/IA design, and sometimes not even much in the way of requirements gathering. The industry is still littered with amatures. Rushed as these may be, a lot of non-profit sites end up a lot worse.
And if your client’s are leaving you to try to get a ‘cowboy’ to do a site in 24 hours for them, you don’t want them as a client.
(and lets not forget cowboys were the first people into space)
Full Code press is nothing but a positive initiative – it’s fun, challenging and at the end of the day, it’s an opportunity for the web community to give back to other member of society that need our skills.
I find it hard to believe that any client would expect their website to be built in 24hrs, under these conditions, in a real world scenario. Again, the Iron Chef analogy is pertinent.
Man there are some harsh comments on the SitePoint post.
I agree with Renae and Steve. It’s a great opportunity to have some fun doing what we all have a passion for and at the same time do some good in the world. What could be better than that!
I think the comments are a bit silly. As if one competition threatens the industry! And 24 hours is plenty enough time for a professional team to put together a good website.
However, I think a bit of follow-up after the competition would be a good idea, just to fix any remaining bugs and tie up loose ends.
[...] two charity websites has announced its team members and attempted to answer a tricky question: are events like this damaging to the web development community? I don’t think that charitable one-off events like this are anything other than a good idea. [...]