All in the Family
By Susan Kuchinskas
DesignShops.com covers Web Techniques' community of Web site designers. Unlike Web Techniques and WebReview, which concentrate on how to create effective sites, DesignShops focuses on the shops themselves, and the business of running a shop. One of the successful features is the biweekly "Shop Talk," which profiles individual Web-design firms. This one appeared earlier this year, and is still available through the Articles Index at www.DesignShops.com/pace/ds/pub. -- Editors
Since the Web design and development fields are only a few years old, you might not expect to find many multigenerational design shops. IMC Digital Universe in Endicott, NY, is one, though (see the
Specs.) It's staffed by Hakim Chishti and his two sons, Muhammad and Ibrahim, and there doesn't seem to be a generation gap.
"I saw my two youngest boys were gifted with computers," Hakim says, "and I decided I'd let them do whatever they wanted." Ibrahim, now 17, and Muhammad, now 15, went to a school that allowed lots of time to work independently. Computers became their lives, and soon, a source of employment. "The reason the Web was particularly suitable for them is they were not visible to anybody," he explains. "People didn't realize they were dealing with a 12-year-old." The two sons are working on their high-school diplomas by taking classes from a Vermont correspondence school.<>
