Diving into the Wonderful World of Web  

When asked for my opinion on how to break into the Web world, I usually tell people to volunteer. I was very lucky when beginning my Web career in the early days of the Internet—my Web sites received a lot of good exposure. But when I jumped into self-employment a few years ago, I had to start all over again: I needed to show potential clients what I could do, not what my Web team could do. So I found a poorly designed Web site and offered to redesign it for free (the Oklahoma Indian Times Web site at www.okit.com). OKIT jumped at the offer (to read more about this, see “The Need for Web Site Navigation” in the June 1999 issue of Intercom). A lot of my friends thought I was crazy doing all that work for free. But I needed to build a Web site from scratch so I could give prospective clients an example of my work. Nothing is more convincing than before and after pictures.

Leonard-Wilkinson, Theresa A. Intercom (2001). Careers>Portfolios>Web Design>Volunteering