Brian Forth, Site Crafter

Brian's talk was a good glimpse into the world of SiteCrafting. There were many interesting aspects to the work of contract website creation. I really appreciated how Brian didn't shy away from referring customers to other services like Squarespace when they couldn't afford SiteCrafting or if it didn't seem like they were the best fit. There was also excellent insights about working with 3rd party design firms, and how much of a nightmare it could be. The story Brian Forth laid out about how the design firm they were working with really screwed them over by over promising to the client and then leaving them to actually implement the promised features. In the end, SiteCrafting ended up losing money on the contract. It was a lesson in picking who you collaborate with, and sticking to dealing with clients directly whenever possible. Designers left to their own devices won't adequately consider the engineering costs of their design, especially when all of these costs are external to them. 

The other important insight to be gained from this talk was security. Brian made the excellent point that security should be baked into every step of the process. Treating security as an afterthought doesn't work. Though he didn't mention the philosophy directly, this is the principle of DevSecOps. Just like a project can accrue tech debt, leaving security concerns until the end of development can create a sort of security debt that can be hard to clean up. When each step of development is followed by a round of security testing, it can be a lot more manageable. This is especially important when dealing with clients like MultiCare Hospital. Overall, Brian's talk was a good crash course in corporate sustainability.

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