Richard Dinnick

The Work

The nub of my job is project management. Our company believes that good project management is key to the successful development of a Web site. I was taken on to project manage large to medium size sites. That's included the relaunch and redesign of thetrainline.com and a site for The Moving Picture Company - a post-production company in Soho that does interesting stuff like Bond movies.

Reading Room has other large clients including Glaxo Wellcome, Smith Kline Beecham, and Epson UK. We also get some curious emails through our work on the Janet Reger (lingerie) site.

Career Route

I progressed via business journalism with Director magazine, Real Business magazine, and as Site Reviews Editor for Internet Magazine. At Real Business magazine I was involved in contract publishing, I've also been a magazine section editor, which all ties in neatly with project management. It's difficult to find good project managers. We're now looking at the construction industry to see if we can move project managers from there across to IT.

Magic Moment of Recognising the Internet's Potential?

Yes, that was a clear moment for me. It was when NASA released pictures from the Mars Pathfinder. That blew my mind, the fact that you could see live pictures from another planet, whenever you wanted to. It was a clear example of what the Net could do. At that point I decided to start interviewing big Internet players for the business magazine I worked on.

The Future

Mobile Internet is the thing that everybody is talking about, and it's going to be massive. The trouble with WAP is that it's not very sexy or exciting. When you've got better technology, as the Japanese have with i-mode, you can see the potential.

On the business side, when salespeople and repairers can check the availability of an item or part and order it on their handheld device, that's going to be big.

I did think that business to business portals would be big, but there are interesting legal ramifications. Excluding companies from your portal can lead to complications.

The Internet vs. TV

When we get proper digital TV, when that's widespread, it will be very important in terms of consumer usage and getting people involved in the Internet who haven't been involved so far.

I used to think you'd get an amalgamation of TV and the Internet, but I don't think that's so any more. It will be the Internet on TV. Interactive TV is going to be massive when it takes off. How long there is to go before it takes off is the real issue.

Maybe Neighbours is on TV and you see a jacket you like. There will be a screen within a screen that gives you the facility to order that jacket. And adverts where you can click through and get more information about a car, or whatever, and order it through interactive TV. This is going to be important for business to consumer trade, particularly for people who don't have a PC or a mobile device. They'll upgrade their TV to get this facility.

As for the other side, video on demand over the Internet, I think that film fans will always want to possess the films they like, as a DVD or video on the shelf. Maybe that will change when interactive TV gets a decent memory, but it's not there yet.

UK Cultural Issues

The UK market suffers from the image of the Internet being nerdy or techie. As a nation we are averse to change, which is one of the reasons I think the Internet on TV is more likely to succeed than TV on the Internet.

In the US, they embrace change a lot more than we do here. They also embrace success. In the UK we like the underdog - people who come close and fail. That's been obvious in the press backlash. They were waiting with knives poised for various dotcoms to go belly-up.

As for connectivity, BT (the UK's dominant telco) has been slow to introduce unmetered access and unbundle the local loop. They've been stalling, and who wouldn't, in their position? They make so much money on calls. Unmetered access is going to hit their profit margin substantially. Oftel (the UK telecoms regulatory body) has been a bit toothless.

Consumer Attitudes to Net Shopping

There's still this feeling that your credit card details are not safe online. And there have been a few stories recently about information available on the Net and hackers getting into sites, which make the press attitude more valid than it was two years ago. The press used to use scare tactics, perhaps because ultimately they could see the Internet replacing them. But there's more truth in their caution now.

Ultimately, there's no reason why giving your details over the Net should be any more scary than giving your credit card to a waiter and letting them disappear for five minutes. But I do think that people offering ecommerce should make their security as tight as it possibly can be. With thetrainline.com we looked at storing people's credit card details for easy shopping, and rejected it for security reasons. Our security is as good as it can be, but we wanted zero risk.

Pet Hates

On ecommerce sites - the inability to buy something immediately. I'm an Internet shopper and I don't want to be presented with lots of information about other things I might be interested in buying. Also bad navigation, having to use the back button, maybe five times, to get back to some decent options.

At the moment, Flash is still an irritant. A lot of designers love Flash, but I'm in favour of Skip Intro. Animation in general is a problem. Look at some amateur sites and you'll find every kind of animated GIF possible. The site finishes up looking like Piccadilly Circus at night. Not pleasing for the eye.

Software Gems

As a company we love Cold Fusion. We find it very developer-friendly. And it allows you to build in modular form, so you can take modules and refine them and plug them into other sites, offering clients functionality at a reduce price. For large sites we also like SilverStream - not a million miles away from Cold Fusion.

A less well-known item is ResizeIE 1.1. This widget allows the resizing of IE to 800x100% or 640x480 etc with a right click - very useful for those of us who have to check sites in development at all screen sizes. You can get it from Download.com.

Advice for New Developers

I think it takes a certain amount of arrogance - no, more like confidence rather than arrogance. You're dealing with directors, maybe CEOs, and you've got to sit there and tell them what's best, turn people around at board level. It's not for the faint of heart.

Richard Dinnick is also author of The Internet Atlas (US ISBN: 078581180X; UK ISBN: 1902616693), a substantial work aimed at new and recent users. The book takes an overview of the Net and how to use its facilities. For each subject category - jobs, sport, entertainment, property etc - it lists around 70 of the best sites with full-colour screenshots. Not a pocket guide, unless you've got A4 sized pockets, but quite likely to bring Amazon close to profitability over the Christmas gift season.