One of the things that I find disappointing about what I do is that the care I take in creating clean, valid sites pretty much flies right out the window once the site is launched and in the hands of the client.

It’s not their fault, usually. Even when I build a site in a CMS and take a lot of time setting up the WYSIWYG editor to guide and specify the types of content they can add, it still gets screwed up and it just gets worse over time.

I’m a regular reader of 456 Berea Street and last night I found this excellent post about helping clients keep their markup clean. This is a really great idea, and I plan to implement it on the next site I build.

Basically what it does is insert some styles into the CSS that make any deprecated elements (like font tags or centers) show up as big and red so that the client can see them (and actually know they’ve done something that has a negative impact on the qualit of the code).  This visual is critical because no matter how many times I tell someone, even a very savvy client, not to use that but to use this instead, sooner or later they’ll do just that. But being able to see it, that’s big. And helpful.

I started using Jewelboxing’s fantastic CD/DVD packaging system a month or so ago and I was really pleased with how professional my little production CD’s look now in the heavy plastic boxes and nicely perforated template sets. I sent a .jpg of my system to them and today I got a post on their blog. Kudos to Jewelboxing for a very nice product.

It went really nicely, BTW. It really couldn’t have gone any better and all of the attendees took a lot of notes. I think I gave them their money’s worth. 

My marketing maven gives a monthly marketing forum here in Fort Collins - a 2-hour marketing fest that usually draws 12-20 local businesspeople.

Back in August she asked me to present at the one in October. It’s tomorrow.

I’m ready as far as the presentation goes - I’ve got my Powerpoint together, it’s cohesive and makes sense - but I haven’t given a presentation like this in a long while. I might be nervous and I hope I don’t talk too fast.

I’m trying to get in the same mindset of the final projects critique in design school at NC State. In that particular class, the semester project was the development of a cheetah habitat for the NC Zoo. I was one of only a few undergrads in the class and I really worked my tail off putting together an informed, creative and well-executed plan.

I saw my fellow students get reamed by the critiquers, a panel of guests of high status in the local landscape architectural world. One after the other they sat down in silence after the panel rather pointedly tore their work apart. I was the second or third from last to go.

And I went. I left my big stack of index cards on the floor. I presented, I explained, I illustrated my points and reinforced my ideas with a good solid design. Very calmly. And to my surprise I did not get reamed - I got praised. I did really, really well and you can guess how excessively happy I was when I went back and sat down with my index cards.

So I’m thinking tomorrow will be like that. I know the material because it’s what I do every day. I have useful information to share, 13 people are paying to hear me do just that and it’ll be my room for about two hours. But in this case, I’m sort of the critiquer and they are, for the most part, students. It should be interesting. And I don’t need index cards this time, either.

My client Rob Palmer, an exceptional wildlife photographer who specializes in birds of prey, is taking an extended trip across Europe and the Middle East over the next three months. He’s just started posting photos in his blog - check it out and keep checking back, there should be new photos every day or two.

Woot!