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Due to spam attacks I had to password protect editing. The password is the web standard you use to define the presentation of a web site (in uppercase).

Enterprise Managers

The Business Continuity Argument (aka. What If You Die)

Big business has concerns that can appear cold and strange to everyone else. Most people think in the short term, such as a few months or maybe even a year, whereas Enterprise Managers think long term. This raises some interesting questions, my favourite being "What if you die?". I'm not joking, a manager of a FTSE250 asked what would happen if I got hit by a bus (or better yet, what would happen if my entire company died of a mysterious plague). This isn't specific to big business. Ten years ago at an organization of a dozen employees, a colleague died suddenly. It took months to pick up and cover the projects she was working on.

Web Standards to the rescue. By pointing out that my work was based on a series of technical specifications laid down by the W3C, and that there is both academic and business community support around those standards, as well as laws mandating their use, I was able to sell the manager on the use of web standards. I'm now tempted to work this into future proposal materials.