sghael

Agreed that this is all cool stuff. But as developer of a webapp that heavily leverages webcam / mic access (blatant plug: http://activeinterview.com), I'm waiting anxiously for this to get fleshed out:

http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-device/

Device access! Then we can really drop kick Flash when needing to talk to devices like webcam/microphone.

But alas, it could be a while? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3012002/what-web-browser-...

As someone far removed from the standards bodies, how can we support this effort and push things along?

Couldn't agree more. If you application is heavily dependent on UI (like most any webapp), then you massively benefit from having one person that's able to do it all. It's a competitive advantage you can't live without.

There is just too much overhead, otherwise, in splitting and managing duties among 2 or 3 people. When I hire developers for my webapp consulting firm, they need to be badass programmers that can own every layer of the stack AND they need to be comfortable slicing PSDs themselves.

IMO, this should apply to Marketing and Biz Dev as well. It's super annoying when the "marketing guy/girl" can't render their own message on the corporate website and has to pass that task on to a developer. Marketing people need to know HTML/CSS at minimum. Otherwise, you just have an "idea guy" with a major handicap in executing on the web.

(btw, this being written by someone who's worked in both a marketing and a tech role)