I just wanted to deliver on the book update I promised last week.Mobile Web App Cookbook is rolling now, with actual words being written. That’s pretty exciting for me.

What’s even more exciting is that we’re finally set with co-authors to do the technical chapters. I wanted to take a minute to introduce them, since they’re going to be the real stars of the show, providing the hands-on expertise the book is going to deliver. Me? I’m just a table-setter.

Anyway, here they are, the rest of the team (in order of appearance in the book):

Mike Morley

Mike is going to be doing chapters on the core technologies (HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript.)

MIKE MORLEY is a freelance mobile user interface developer at 9eggs.com and has spent many years building web applications for financial institutions and digital media agencies. For the past few years he has specialized in developing mobile web applications for a range of clients from UK high street retailer New Look, the car manufacturer Ford and the UK lottery. When not building mobile web apps he may be spotted on the golf course or walking along the coast near Colchester (UK), where he lives with his wife Rachel, his young son and Chocky the dog.

Rich Freedman

Rich is going to be working on the jQuery Mobile section.

RICH FREEDMAN is a consultant at Chariot Solutions, where he works with a wide variety of technologies for clients ranging from startups to members of the Fortune 500. Rich has over 20 years of application development experience. He has been blogging about software development for several years, is a DZone MVP blogger, and has reviewed several books for Manning, including JQuery in Action and Roo in Action. When he’s not programming or reading or writing about programming, he’s probably in the kitchen, whipping up a gourmet vegan meal, while thinking about programming. Rich lives in Lambertville, New Jersey, a small and architecturally wonderful 18th century city.

Lee Boonstra

Lee is going to be working on the Sencha Touch chapters.

Lee Boonstra lives together with her partner in Amsterdam the Netherlands. While doing her study (Art & Technology) in 2004 she started her own web development company to continue to grow and learn new technologies. Right now her focus is more on mobile (web) apps. Her most successful app is available at the Apple Appstore and Google Chrome webstore: Spotlib.

In the last year of her study she worked for Accenture as a senior back-end (Java) developer for clients such as UPC and KLM/Air France.
After 3 years she decided to make the move to the front-end. “I think it’s advantageous to understand back-end technologies while working on the front-end. I’m a creative person and I like to have a nice workflow and see my changes directly on the screen.” In 2009 she started working as a front-end team lead for eFocus, one of the top 3 fullservice internet agencies in The Netherlands. “I’m working with a lot of (front-end) technologies & frameworks, and that is why I love my work so much: jQuery (Mobile), Mootools, Dojo, CSS3, HTML5, XML, SQL and recently Sencha Touch”. As a team lead she works on both mobile and web for middle to large scale clients, such as Deloitte, Heineken and Philips.

Beside technologies, Lee’s other passions are alternative music, attending concerts and festivals and (what she is famous in Amsterdam for) being a drag king performer and model. And let’s not get started about how extensive her videogame (console) collection is…

I’m late with this post. I’ve been busy! Finishing this post has been tougher than I imagined it would be.

Starting a new job is tough enough, adding in two visits to New York, one to Toronto and getting ready for HTML5 Live have made it even tougher. I think I’m through the toughest part of the transition now, so here I am, writing like a madman.

Anyway, I promised to talk a little bit about my new job. I won’t go into exhaustive detail, but I know some of you are interested, so I might as well get it out of the way now, before it doesn’t feel like a “new” job any more.

As I mentioned previously, I’ve moved over to Sapient Global Markets. My title is Senior Specialist, Platform.

As for what I’m doing, my job splits into three basic components- thought leadership, building a world class front end engineering team and bringing cutting edge solutions to clients.

• Thought leadership. I’m not a huge fan of the phrase, but “writing and talking about emerging technology” doesn’t fit as well in a job description. I’ve already been doing this as much as possible. The difference with my new role is that it’s written into my job description and mandated from up on high. So, now I’ve got scheduled time for the kind of activities (writing, speaking, open source work) that I previously had to fit in around client engagements (which rarely happened) or after hours in my “free” time. Hopefully you guys will get some benefit out of me being able to write a little bit more.
• Building a team. I’ve been instrumental in hiring and have worked developing junior staff for a few years now, so I’m pretty comfortable with this aspect of the job. The two key differences here are that I’m basically starting from scratch at my new role and I’ll be looking to build a truly global team. I’m not 100% sure what the eventually distribution will be, but I’ll be filling out slots between Boston, India and potentially a couple of other spots around the world. Making sure a team with that sort of geographical spread feel like a “team” will present a new wrinkle.

  Another clear challenge is cultivating front end engineering talent in India. Traditionally, people doing front end work there are junior and are doing so as a steppingstone on their way to writing “real” code- C# or Java. The combination of looking ahead to getting to do “real” work and the limited experience these guys possess have conspired to make it tougher than it should be to staff front end engineers in India. Hopefully I can help to change that by getting young Indian engineers excited about the web as a platform and open standards in general.

  By the way, one of those roles is already open. We’re looking for a Senior Interactive Developer in Boston. Come work with me. It’ll be fun. Shoot me an email, if you’re interested.

• Client Work. The interesting challenge at this job is that I’ll be working with clients who are much more conservative than some of the organizations I’ve worked with previously. Educating some of the financial services giants on the power of the open web platform and delivering work that leverages those technologies in novel, but concrete ways will be an ongoing challenge. The good news is many of the cooler open web technologies are tailor-made for markets based businesses, so I’ll be selling them on Canvas, SVG, WebSockets, etc. Should be fun.

And that’s it. That’s the new gig. It’ll keep me busy for a while, I think.

I’ve got three versions to share- a pptx, an old-school ppt and a pdf

I have no video. Video exists and I will share it as soon as I see it. I think it went pretty well, other than the fact that I surprised myself with the ending. I had adjusted some slides and forget where the last one was… all of a sudden it was over. Oops.

Still it went pretty well and I’m definitely going to do the same presentation at other venues. It’s a pretty good topic, I think, and I could tweak it to be super technical or more high level depending on the audience.

Thanks to the HTML5 Live folks for having me down to speak. It was a good time.

Just in case you missed it the first time I mentioned this event, HTML5 Live is just a couple of days away and I’m getting excited for my presentation. It’s on a topic I love, getting people up and running with emerging standards, it’s in New York and the rest of the lineup is excellent. It should be a great event. If you’re going to be there please make sure to say hi. I’m there just for the event so I’m going to be happy to talk about this stuff as long as there are people willing to listen

Here’s the description:

HTML5 From the Front Lines: What to Embrace Today (and What to Avoid)

As an engineer working on big, consumer sites and applications, Rob Larsen has had hands-on, production experience with pretty much every emerging technology that’s available in a modern browser. In this session Rob will draw on that experience to walk through the current standards landscape and share his take on what technologies are worth using right now and which should be avoided.

This is also the first presentation I’ve done since I moved to Sapient Global Markets, so that’s another exciting wrinkle. For those of you waiting on the post about my new job, I’ll be writing that over the next couple of days.

It’s an exciting opportunity so I want to do it justice when I share it with all of you.

Today is my last day at Isobar. While I’m going to talk more about the new job on Monday, I won’t keep you in suspense. I’m going to Sapient Global Markets to build out their front end engineering practice.

Before I move on, I just want to talk a little bit about Isobar. All things considered, Isobar has been great for me. I left Cramer to get closer to emerging technology and to work on harder problems on a daily basis. That’s worked out perfectly as I’ve had real-world experience with just about every new feature out there. Other people might be talking about the web platform and HTML5, I’ve been knee deep in it for over a year and a half.

That’s been very cool.

While that technology experience has been invaluable, the thing about Isobar that will drive me the most at my new job is the challenge of trying to put together a front end engineering team that will match the quality of the one I’m leaving behind. The makeup of the team has changed a lot since my first day*, but the one thing that has remained constant is the exceptional quality of the people we’ve hired and the outstanding quality of the work we’ve produced. It’s been a real pleasure and I’m sure the team will continue to operate at a very high level.

*day one my colleagues included Paul Irish, Nick Cooley, Adam McIntyre and we even had John Hann in as a contractor (working with Sue.) Not a bad lineup.

Like the subject says, I’m going to be presenting at HTML5 Live in November.

Here’s the description:

HTML5 From the Front Lines: What to Embrace Today (and What to Avoid)

As an engineer working on big, consumer sites and applications, Rob Larsen has had hands-on, production experience with pretty much every emerging technology that’s available in a modern browser. In this session Rob will draw on that experience to walk through the current standards landscape and share his take on what technologies are worth using right now and which should be avoided.

It’s a good lineup and it’s in New York. What more could you want?

As the title says, I’m working on a book. I signed the agreement yesterday so I’m finally be able to share the news with all of you. It’s been in the works for a while, so getting it to the point where it’s something I can talk about is a pleasure.

The book is with Manning Publications and the title is Mobile Web App Cookbook. As of right now, it looks like it’ll be out in the first half of 2012.

It’s going to be multi-author book dealing with, you guessed it, mobile web app development. I’m the lead author, setting the tone for the book and providing the framing chapters. As of now, I’m planning on introducing the factors driving mobile web app development; providing an in-depth examination of the full range of technologies in play and then wrapping up the subject in a closing chapter. In addition to my contribution, several other authors will provide detailed examples using technologies like Sencha Touch, jQuery Mobile and pure HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript.

It’s going to be a serious, technical introduction to an increasingly important branch of web development.

I’ll be sharing more details as I get them.

Why Mobile?

While I’m happy to be writing a book at all, I’m especially excited by the mobile focus of this project. To me, getting people and organizations excited about mobile web development and the continued evolution of the web platform is vital. I believe that a free and open web is a force for positive change in the world. For the web platform to remain viable and win out over app stores and other proprietary, closed ecosystems, people need to have the knowledge and tools to develop world class, cross-device applications for mobile devices. This book will help people do just that.

That’s pretty cool.

I AM OBLIGED TO ADD THE FOLLOWING NOTE TO MY INTERNET BLOG DEVICE.

I really want to go to Austin Texas and talk about the World Wide Web and mobile devices. Don’t you want to see that happen? I know you do.

You guys are awesome.

SXSW 2012 – HTML5 vs Native Apps — Who Will Win?.

On more than one occasion I’ve been interviewed by someone and they’ve told me, point blank, that they “didn’t prepare at all for this” or “didn’t even look at your resume.”

Really?

While this is lame no matter what industry or role, with front end engineers it’s incredibly frustrating.

Throughout the “Ajax era” any other experienced front end engineer has been interviewing from a relative position of strength. In my personal situation, I’ve been employed over the past five years by good companies, working with people I like and respect; but anyone with a strong background in HTML, CSS and (especially) JavaScript who is looking for a job is going to have several options available at any given time. That’s just the nature of the industry right now. We’re in an extremely fortunate place right now.

So… with that in mind it should be clear that if you’re hiring on the front end you have to actively recruit. This is just the reality of hiring front end engineers. Everyone wants someone great and there just aren’t that many great people around. If you find someone you’ve got to put forth some actual effort. I know all about this from both sides of the table. For example, we’ve had this role open at Isobar for ages and we haven’t found the right fit just yet.* There aren’t all that many people that fit those requirements.

So, what’s a candidate supposed to think when someone walks in and admits, in effect, that the candidate’s time and/or the role isn’t important enough to merit even minimum effort?

How is that recruiting?

It’s not, and speaking from experience, being on the other side of some of those comments it reflects poorly on the organization as a whole. People picked to screen and interview staff should recognize that it’s important for a team or organization. It should never be such a burden that they can’t even do the minimum, and in the rare occasions where it’s impossible to do proper set-up they have the common decency to pretend that they did so as to not insult the candidate. If the person you’ve picked to do interviews can’t do that minimum, it’s probably time to pull them out of the rotation.

Putting it simply: it’s hard hiring people that do what we do. You’ve got to take it seriously.

*Hopefully moving downtown will help us fill it (plus don’t you want to work closely with me? Wouldn’t that be awesome?)

So, as you probably noticed I did a bunch of writing for IBM earlier this year. Because of that I’ve got about a million draft posts here that I’ve got sitting in various states of completion. I’m going to work my way through them over the next few weeks. You’ve been warned (in a good way, I hope.)

Anyway, this happened a couple of weeks ago, but it’s still interesting (and important to me personally) so I thought I’d point it out again, in case you missed it the first time.

Over at Isobar we recently relaunched our Front-end Code Standards & Best Practices document and posted it up on Github to solicit feedback and changes from the community.

This document has made a strong impression in the year plus since Paul announced it and because of that we take it pretty seriously. To that end we wanted to update the design a little bit (just because it needed it) and have revisited a lot of the content to make sure it remains fresh and still reflects the current trends of web development.

So, check it out and let us know if there’s anything we can improve.