I am a web professional. I pride myself on my knowledge of all things web related. It has been like this for my entire technical career. It is what I do (apart from take the occasional photograph).
But with my move to Brisbane I have lost a lot of the contacts and peers that I had in Melbourne and the UK. Well not “lost” them, but I have lost my professional network I guess – you know the ones that know your work, send business your way, things like that. I miss being in touch with the high quality of professional that I am used to.
To fix this I have decided to up my involvement in cross-border interest groups and I have joined the Web Industry Professional Association (WIPA), Interaction Design Association (IxDA) , Web Standards Group (WSG) and the Information Architecture Institute.
I have also volunteered within these some of these organisations to either coordinate events or to help with the technical build of their internal projects.
I hope it works out, I know I am looking forward to it.