Recap: From Documents to Apps: Evolving an Open Web – Molly Holzschlag

This month Refresh Detroit was honored to welcome Molly Holzschlag to Refresh Detroit. Molly is considered one of the ~~godfathers~~ godmother of the Web. Her talks centered around “From Documents to Apps: Evolving an Open Web”. As an advocate for open standards, she outlined how the open web allows for the empowerment of all individuals via global access.

Mollydotcom She started her talk with a quote from Hillman Curtis that I am very fond of and wanted to share:

“Be prepared to reinvent yourself. Be prepared to go out on a limb occasionally, and be prepared to do the things that you feel strongly about”
- Hillman Curtis

I’m not going to give you a play by play of her talk because she was kind enough to let us record it. The full audio is available below and on Soundcloud.

A few things that stood out for me while she went through her presentation and interacted with the audience were:

Setup a personal advisory committee, no one person knows everything about the web.
It’s survival of the most adaptive, not survival of the fittest.
On the Web nothing matters, browsers, OS, data format, or language.
The definition of “open” often means transparency. But the preference is to mean authenticity.
The many things rule: Never look at one thing and thing it is just one thing.
Adopt a error forgiveness. We cannot know it all.
ARIA is the important piece that most Web sites are missing.