A person who works with information
could very well be doing anything for anybody. What determines how well we work together is how aligned our values are:
I work to provide my clients with something of value that they own and that lasts. I try to put them on track to do more of the same.
Digital technology may be new, but the problems it tackles are as old as history itself. What does this or that mean? Who gets access to what? What happens if they do? Tech is about method while information is about meaning. Meaning should always take precedence over method, unless there's a good reason for it not to.
All new construction can be reframed as repairing a broken context—filling a hole with something that was missing. This attitude pervades all of my work.
It has been known since almost as long as software has existed that the best way to make it is stepwise. Not only does incrementalism keep the risk down, but you often need several rounds of feedback to get the results right.
I am deeply committed to using and developing open standards and open-source software. It's not just a noble mission: these also tend to make for the highest-quality materials.
A healthy relationship is one that you can safely get out of. In the IT world, this is increasingly rare. I am always looking out to mitigate my clients' dependency on specific vendors, including me.