Eric DeLabarWeb 2.0 from a Web Purist and J2EE Developer

If I’m ever going to be rich and famous people will need to know who I am. *Removes tongue from cheek.* If anyone knows who I am it should probably be Google. How good is a web guru if they’re not number one in Google for their own name? Seriously would you trust anything I had to say if you couldn’t find me in Google? Well, it seems I have that covered, at least for now, I’m number one, two, three and four on a search for eric delabar. My problem starts with result number five.

The previous owner of the number one spot on Google is a professional soccer player and coach who shares my name. No offense to him, but I really don’t want the association. So here’s my problem, I can establish me, but how do I establish not me?

To establish me I’ve of course created this blog, it’s hosted on ericdelabar.com how more authoritative can you be. I’ve created an identity page written with XFN markup to establish what other sites, accounts, and profiles out there are mine, and I’ve created a FOAF file and linked to it from the head of this document. If I understand the Google Social Graph API, this pretty much means I’ve established me, at least I will have as soon as my site’s been crawled and indexed.

What about not me? Good question; there is no rel="not-me" in XFN, maybe there should be, but then again is it really necessary? It’s also really not the point of XFN, maybe Google needs some extensions in order to more appropriately identify the edge types. Or maybe they just figure that if I used my identity page to point to all sites that are me doesn’t that mean anything that isn’t specified isn’t me? What about things I haven’t written myself? For instance a news article on “Eric DeLabar,” can I establish that one article is about me and another article is about the soccer player? How about blog and forum comments, it would be great to have an authenticated and decentralized means of establishing me on a site that is not my own. It would be even better if I could then aggregate these comments into my own site to track my current conversations in the blogosphere.

I guess what this all comes down to is that I’m wondering how long until Google has the ability to generate something like the following:

Google, are you listening? A few more microformat parsers, an opt-out (or opt-in) page, and the information you already have.

Let me start out by saying I love my job, as far as I know my employer is in great standings and will be in business for years to come, and as of this moment, I’m not actively looking for a new job. With that being said, if an offer-I-can’t-refuse lands on my lap, I’m probably outta’ here. The problem with that statement is why should an offer like that land on my lap? I have this website (which at the moment doesn’t do much showing off at all), a LinkedIn profile, and a community theatre website, on a generic WordPress theme, to show to my name and abilities.

I work a 40+ hour week, have a wife and new child, and participate in a number of activities and have quite a few hobbies, so my time is definitely at a premium. In the past I’ve done freelance work but none since I’ve worked here, and none I’d want my name associated with today. (Experience has taught me a lot.) My work here is in most cases hidden behind firewalls on corporate intranets or protected by non-competes or privacy clauses that keep me from saying I’ve done work for Client A so that Company B doesn’t know who their competitor is using. The work I do complete that’s publicly available and open for discussion is rarely more than 10% mine, and more often than not does not exercise any of the design ideals I believe in. Even if it was I don’t believe it’s in my right to use these in a personal portfolio that exists to potentially take me away from my current job. Which basically means I have nothing to show from four-years professional experience and ten years web experience other than a unstyled blog and a low-traffic, locale-specific website I don’t have time to make amazing.

I guess the point of this post goes back to something Andy Rutledge said a few weeks ago regarding design professionalism. In the words of some insurance company life comes at you fast; I don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring and I have a family to support should my job disappear for some reason. I feel I should have a portfolio and a resume, be it from freelance or from some side business, or even from my work at my current employer. I don’t think it’s a matter of unprofessionalism, it’s a matter of self preservation. My high-school guidance counselor said statistically speaking I’d have something like fifteen jobs in the length of my career, I’m on number five, (maybe six or seven, depending on your definition of a job), I can’t afford to be unemployed, so where does that leave me? Right now, partially by my own fault, possibly by my employer’s intentions (which I can’t blame them for), I’m stuck in a hole, destined (or doomed) to work here as long as my job exists. Again, don’t get me wrong, I like my job, I don’t think it’s going anywhere, but there’s a lot of wisdom in not placing all of one’s proverbial eggs in a single basket.