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Update: Audio for this presentation is now available (mp3) from the conference’s site.
This year, my third presenting at @media in London (2006, 2007), Patrick offered me the morning plenary slot. I used the time to talk about a topic of great interest to me: Professional Frontend Engineering.
Over the last three or four years the role of Frontend Engineering has become more important, more respected, more challenging, and more in-demand than ever before, and so I wanted to put a stake in the ground clarifying what we do, how we do it, and why it’s so important to raise it to a professional level. I had four goals:
- Put a stake in the ground.
- Reiterate our values.
- Advocate the discipline.
- Nurture a healthy Web.
The goals were threaded throughout the four sections of the talk:
- Historical Perspective
- Our Beliefs & Principles
- Knowledge Areas & Best Practices
- Why It All Matters
The talk is embedded below (or download: keynote, pdf, quicktime).
I think this topic is critical to the advancement of the Internet. I’ll be writing more about this in these pages in the coming weeks and months, but for now enjoy the slides. And please share your thoughts and feedback in the comments.
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Blake Elshire June 11th, 2008 - 11:41 am
I’m glad that you and generally the industry as a whole is coming to the conclusion that Frontend Engineering is more than just HTML + CSS. We need more evangelists and organizations to take up this cause and push our profession forward. I wish I could have been at your presentation to hear more of your thoughts, it looks like a great one from the slides.
Rubén Lozano June 11th, 2008 - 1:39 pm
Cool! Thanks for the slides.
Pjtr June 11th, 2008 - 2:41 pm
Thank you. I really enjoyed your talk and the slides will help me to make sense of my notes ;-)
The Keynote file download isn’t behaving properly (in Safari and FF on mac): it does sort of a ‘Show Package Contents’ thing…
What I saw at @media 2008 | Broken Links June 11th, 2008 - 2:44 pm
[…] Professional front end engineering (Nate Koechley) […]
London and Amsterdam | Nate Koechley's Blog June 11th, 2008 - 2:52 pm
[…] Slides for these talks have been posted: Professional Frontend Engineering in London and High Performance Web Sites in […]
Andy Pemberton June 12th, 2008 - 7:35 am
Nate: thanks for the slides; really nice to see someone pulling this together.
I work for a consulting company and I’ve argued for the job title ‘Front End Architect’ at various times throughout my tenure.
I also use YUI on various client projects; just a thought, I’d consider YUI compressor a great addition to the tools slide.
Anyway, thanks again. I plan on using your train of thought here to formalize a group of front-end focused developers within our company.
@media Blog » Blog Archive » Audio Highlight: Nate Koechley June 13th, 2008 - 6:14 am
[…] Slides […]
Nelson Menezes June 13th, 2008 - 12:09 pm
Excellent! Thank you for this; it’s important that respectability comes to the profession of front-end design (both from outside and inside the field).
Infovore » links for 2008-06-17 June 17th, 2008 - 3:31 pm
[…] Slides: Professional Frontend Engineering | Nate Koechley’s Blog Awesome stuff. This, really, is one of my core backgrounds: not so much being an “HTML monkey” but performing genuine front-end engineering. It’s such a shame so many places don’t see it as a true skill. (tags: natekoechley frontend clientside web development programming engineering performance presentation awesome) […]
matt June 22nd, 2008 - 7:38 pm
I made my new business cards intentionally vague out of fear of being moved to another department again and having to reorder. But rather than putting Web Developer down (which I think is really ambiguous), I put down Front-end Engineer, because it’s the most specific and relevant to what I do.
Good to hear the term getting some respect. Thanks!
Learning the World » @media 2008 June 25th, 2008 - 12:15 pm
[…] next day started with Nate Koechley’s keynote about professional frontend engineering. He chose the topic because he thinks this is critical to the advancement of the Internet, and I […]
Shawn June 26th, 2008 - 12:55 pm
Wow, really great talk you gave there. I’ll go along with all the other comments above by saying ‘ditto’.
Great work!
amit singh July 18th, 2008 - 2:07 am
its good to see that job of front end engineering is getting some value because normally in companies being an expert in front end engineerin is nothing special. every developer can do UI here. we need people like you who can tell the importance of being front end engineer.
can we can also include jsf in front end engineering skills ?
Thierry July 20th, 2008 - 1:44 pm
Nice slides, great suff!
Navarts Blog » Professional Frontend Engineering September 2nd, 2008 - 10:35 am
[…] Yahoo!’s Nate Koechley recently posted slides and audio from a presentation he gave on Professional Frontend Engineering. […]