Taming the Shrewd

If you've played Scrabble, the word-game on a game board, you know the result of a good game is a maze of interconnected words. If you've played competitive Scrabble, you know of strategies that can improve your odds of winning. Add further word studies and memory lists of words behind those strategies and you have a better chance of winning in competition. But of course, the same is true for your opponent.

I liken competitive Scrabble to being on the web effectively. We have millions of people and hundreds of thousands of businesses plying waters on the great-blue pixelled ocean. Motives are almost instinctive, certainly primary. Most want recognition. Whether business or person, nearly all are looking to mark their presence on Planet Earth.

That's just like the millions of Scrabble players who play the game without strategy or studied thinking in place. The odds of their success in competition are diminished to almost zero. They become the sand on the beach overwhich the real sailors tread. If they gain recognition at all, they may be nothing more than a footstep in the sand at low tide. They'll wash away in time.

To play competitive Web, you need a model like competitve Scrabble. You are entering a maze, step by step. To become competitive, you first have to start. No entry, no gain; and entry without much knowledge surely spells failure: if nothing worse, in the form of minimized results. So you don't give up there; if you want to sail successfully on the pixelled waters, you have to gain the skills of an advanced sailor: study, application, study, application. This is true for any form of learning.

Get your feet wet. Taste the salt air. Feel the wind. Tack and cut. Use the rudder. Play it safe and return to port; but prepare always to sail the ocean grand, because out there, across the seemingly impassable sea, are new worlds that can bring you rich return on trade.

So I have two metaphors working here to understand what it takes to make it on the web. One is about what it takes to make it in the maze of competitive Scrabble; the other, about learning to sail well-enough to cross an ocean. These two models give clue to my approach to the ever-advancing, always-changing pace of the web and web design.

Do I want recognition? Of course! Do I want to engage in a prosperous trade? I don't want to be an ordinary grain of sand on the beach. I want to sail the sea all the way across successfully and back again. Of course! How about you? If you want what I want, then stick around or come back to my beach once in awhile where I expect you'll see results of applied learning as I go through the failures and mistakes inherently necessary to maximize my understanding and consequent ability to use the web effectively.