I work for Indiana Career and Postsecondary Advancement Center, located at the Smith Research Center. There are 50 employees, 4 of which work for multimedia.

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Instructional, college and career counseling.

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I work with software development teams to convert published materials to html

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Typical day-to-day activities include:

* Sometimes tedious html coding; and some design & development.

*Most of the published material on ICPAC's web site started out as PageMaker 6 (or 5, or 4) files. PageMaker 6 has a "HTML Author" ; addition which translates PageMaker 6 into html - there's still quite a bit of "tweaking" required, though, because this "HTML Author" isn't foolproof - or even close, sometimes.

So a lot of my time is spent translating PageMaker 6 files into html, and fine-tuning these files. Now, the editor-of-choice is Netscape Gold 3, beta 8. This is supposed to be a wysiwyg editor, but there are a few shortcomings here concerning text wrap and graphics. The newer betas allow for easier table editing, which is very helpful - ICPAC publishes a lot of different types of tables.

I also use "Webthing," a shareware text editor-based html authoring tool. I began to use Webthing when I needed to insert a table into a document (before Netscape could handle this). Because Webthing uses macros to write the most tedious parts of html coding, you can "learn" the coding easier because you don't have to worry about making small errors.

At this time, we still have a backlog of original material to post, and then there will be scheduled updates of college profiles. Later we are incorporating a major database into the site - the deal with WorkForce Development represents a 10% increase in ICPAC's operating budget, and will change greatly how our site looks. But until then, about 70% of my time is spent translating the backlog of PM6 documents.

I spend perhaps 20% of my time planning, designing, developing applications; and another 10% surfing about for links to include as resources.

At this moment, ICPAC is a homeless web site - we are finally getting a dedicated NT box for the server; after that time we should be able to go ahead with more elaborate features. Right now we have a crude forms mailer working (or I should say, until this past weekend - the shareware trial period on PolyForms expired and shut down those links). That's the problems with tightly-budgeted state funding. Right now, no $ for development.

We have plans to make a few of the documents interactive - we have an interest inventory, which would lend itself well to this treatment; a few other simulators are possible also. This could be done in active-x or something else, but the server's homecoming comes first.

I've had a lot of autonomy with the design and development of the site. It is completely new since I came aboard in February; the old site had almost no "original" material - it was all links to other places. Now we have about 120 different documents out there. We use a number of server-side includes to standarize formatting; we have no animations, scrolling text, applets, image maps, etc.

There is one multimedia artist at ICPAC, a very talented artist who does all the dtp work - and that's a lot. David often helps out on the WWW side by putting together graphics for the pages - too often, what worked on paper won't work on the web, so he comes up with something original.

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Skills needed for this job include:

* Enrollment in IST.

* This is a new profession, one which isn't fully defined. Good news for someone who can learn quickly and has an interest in new technology. Depending on the site, one could "write" everything, or almost nothing. I do very little writing; what little I do could be easily palmed off to someone else. Most of the time, my writing is essentially cut-and-paste work. Visual design skills are a must.

Unix isn't required for this particular job but it sure comes in handy. Right now, I can simply "save" files to the server - and with a pentium machine and 21" monitor for web editing, and a lil' ol' Mac next to it, I can make changes to the site and see immediately what it looks like. very convenient, seamless and transparent.

Programming skills aren't really required either but it's a darn good idea. Ability to work as part of a team - to accept criticism, find consensus, plan and execute - is most important. Everyone has a vision of what a website should be.

There is a lot of drudgery - like changing one line of code in a series of 100 documents. Be prepared to peel yourself from the screen from time to time, so the ability to manage time effectively is helpful; it helps prevent burnout.

ICPAC is committed to professional development and is sending me to Adobe's internet conference in October. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to learn more about this rapidly-changing environment.

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IST !

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What would you like students in college to know about your job before they start looking for jobs in multimedia?
That you never stop learning this stuff

last update 1 August 1997 by eboling@indiana.edu
Instructional Systems Technology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
URL = http://www.indiana.edu/~iirg/ARTICLES/media/miller.lilly.html