Chattanooga Pulse

What if you went to college for four years, training for what you thought would be a top-flight job—then found you couldn’t get arrested?

The organizers behind the upcoming WE Rock Summit, happening here in Chattanooga August 5-8, want to make sure this does not happen to more graduates seeking to become web designers and developers. Their immediate goal: creating and introducing “standards-based web education.”

According to Leslie Jensen-Inman, assistant professor of art, design and technology at UTC, and a charter member of conference organizers Open Web Education Alliance, far too many educational institutions in the US and abroad are training students using outdated methodology. What that means, she says, is that although big employers such as Yahoo! might be willing to re-train a prospective employee, many smaller companies “are hiring the geek in the basement, who may have been a philosophy or theatre major but knows how to create what they need.”

At the summit, a group of internationally based collaborators will be working to create standards for web education. Ultimately, the group hopes to draft a white paper containing specific recommendations for ways in which colleges and universities can create courses that better prepare students for the workplace. The plan is to introduce the white paper at 2010’s South by Southwest in Austin.

In the meantime, Jensen-Inman points proudly to the role UTC is playing in the formation of standards. “We are a state-funded institution, but we are trend-setting in a way many private institutions are not,” she says. She notes that her own three-year position, funded by the Lyndhurst and Benwood foundations, was created from the perceived need to take leadership in this area—and UTC has.

In addition, although funding for the summit was only secured in June, nearly 30 local sponsors have come on board to support it, she says.

A panel discussion of web education’s past, present and future will take place at 5:30, August 6, at the Hunter Museum, followed by a reception. The panel will be moderated by John Allsopp, of Web Directions in Australia, and panel members include Adobe’s Scott Fergette, Yahoo!’s Nick Fogler, MailChimp’s Aaron Walter, and Jensen-Inman. Admission is free, but reservations are recommended, which you can make by going to www.webeducationrocks.com

Chattanooga Stand Reaches A Monumental Milestone

Chattanooga Stand is a community visioning effort with a very straightforward goal: ask 25,000 people what they want for the future of the Chattanooga region through a four-question survey. This past Saturday, Stand reached a monumental milestone with the collection of its 12,500th survey.

If momentum was slow to build during the two months following the campaign’s May 3 launch, Stand has surely found its stride during the month of July.  For the past three weeks, staff and volunteers have averaged more than 1,600 survey responses per week.

Stand’s strategy is to find people where they are gathered, start conversations, and create the time and space for them to respond to the survey. Stand’s presence at large-scale public events, neighborhood gatherings, churches, and businesses draws valuable input from residents across the region.

During the coming weeks, Stand will surge toward its initial goal of 25,000 responses from people in all walks of life. Upon reaching 19,000 responses, Chattanooga will succeed Calgary, Alberta, Canada as home of the world’s largest survey-based community visioning effort.

Upcoming events at which Stand will have a presence include Nightfall, Riverfront Nights, Chattanooga Parent magazine’s Back to School Boogie, National Night Out, and neighborhood parties sponsored by local councilmen Manuel Rico and Andraé McGary.