The band may be glad that they wrote such a popular song that brought them to fame, but at the same time, it feels like a curse.

And we are grateful for our iron lung

I often regard my age and my gender as my iron lung. It has helped me stand out because teenage developers who are women are uncommon, and I doubt I’d be where I am today if were a man, or a little bit older, but I also regard these labels as a curse.

I’m worried that I will only get asked to speak at conferences so that people don’t complain there aren’t any women speakers. I’m concerned that the work that I do will be less important than my “female developer” label. No matter how good I am at what I do, there are some clients who don’t want to work with me because they think I’m too young, and then they go and pick someone else with ‘more experience’ to build their site in tables. There are events that I can’t go to until 2011 like SXSW, because I wouldn’t be allowed in any of the bars where social events are held. I find it hard to socialise when I am at events because everyone there is usually a lot older than me, and then when I am round friends my own age, I feel like we can’t relate to each other because we’re leading such different lives.

I hope this doesn’t sound emo, I guess I just wanted to get it off my chest, and because now I understand what Radiohead meant by their iron lung.

So what’s this all about?

It’s not easy for young people starting out in the web design/development industry.  There seems to be the assumption that teenage-webbie-wannabies are only interested in making a quick buck.  Many don’t attend conferences or meetups, and there are few courses that use up-to-date material.

There are so many young people aspiring to work in the industry who have grown up with the Internet, and are pro-active in using it.  Many have learnt HTML through customising their MySpace profiles.  In a few years, there will be a huge increase in the number of people in my generation publishing content, and not knowing about things like accessibility and web standards.  This could slow the pace at which the web is progressing.

When I became a part of the Boagworld production team, I was contacted by a number of people my age who were just starting out in the industry and asked for careers advice and tips on starting out.  Many more have come out of the woodwork since. I got in contact with a few of these people to ask them if they thought it would be a good idea to build a website aimed at young people starting out in the industry.  We decided to work together to build ScrunchUp to give advice on best practices, accessibility and web standards.

ScrunchUp will be a magazine-style website with content aimed at young people.  We’re working hard to bring it to you as soon as possible, although many of us are starting courses this month so you’ll have to bear with us!

So a big, big thank you to everyone who has made this possible including Jamie, Teifion, Ollie, James, Alistair and Jane.