Narrative: The Professional Development position at AS.COM includes several duties, the first and most important being to obtain new technical knowledge, bring that information back to the group, and as an "expert" train others. This task is not easy as software is rapidly changing and the time/learning curve is sometimes overwhelming. Other responsibilities are to provide online resources for web development and utilities such as Flash, Java, Photoshop, etc, and to be a resource yourself for any group member who might need particular technical assistance.

To be successful in this position the Professional Developer must have an interest in gaining technical knowledge and must have patience, first with learning the new material and then teaching others. The PD must also have the ability to articulate what he/she has learned, be available and willing to help others, and feel confident exploring and experimenting with emerging technologies.

Evaluation: Like other AS.COM members I feel that time-constraints resulted in my decreased performance as a PD. With enthusiasm to learn Flash I met with Kay, the other PD, to begin our journey to higher understanding. Soon it became apparent that the software was more complex than first thought and that help would have to be sought. Will Rourke in the Digital Media Center proved to be an excellent resource. Kay and I attended his Flash introductory course, met with him to learn how to use Flash for our group 1930s timeline project, and he willingly agreed to teach a more advanced private course on Flash. Several AS.COM members attended and after two hours the session had to end with numerous topics not yet covered.

With more time and intensive self-learning I would have felt more comfortable with Flash and could have been more effective in helping others. Kay and I agreed that we did not feel confident in teaching the group Flash and trusted a DMMC expert to help us all.

My suggestions to future Professional Developers would be to start early and seek out as many resources as possible to gain the knowledge you will need to teach others. Also, it is helpful to apply what you have learned by creating actual functional websites. The best way to learn is by doing and forcing myself to use a Flash application in each of my projects increased my working knowledge. One idea to get others more familiar with new software might be to assign a small exercise or require the use of certain technology in a project.