Getting Into Andy’s Pants
I’ve been reading an article on Malarkey’s site called the BritPack and where do we go from here where he — as well as the other “Proud Members” of the Britpack — is concerned about appearing elitist.
Let’s face it, the Britpack is made up of some of the finest web designers and developers in the UK. It also includes a German, who ought to be disqualified — not for being German, but because he can’t tell the difference between a W.H.Smiths and a Woolworths. These are people who write books on webdesign. They speak at conferences on web design. They have standards coming out of their arses (not the most pleasant mental image, perhaps).
So is the BritPack an elite organisation? Well, kind of. It is made up from some of the elite web designers and developers, so in that sense yes it is. On the other hand, it’s also a bunch of friends and it’s based around a puerile joke.
The Britpack logo is a pair of underpants with a Union Jack on it. Members of the BritPack refer to themselves as ‘Proud Members’. Do you see?
From what I’ve heard, the Britpack basically use their group as a mailing list to:
ask sensible or silly questions, arrange meet-ups and attempt to get rude messages past Ian Lloyd’s work email filters.Malarkey
This doesn’t really strike me as a serious professional organisation.
The biggest risk is simply that people don’t get the joke. If someone imagines the BritPack to be an exclusive in-crowd of premier web designers, they’d maybe be right. But that’s coincidental. What the Britpack happens to be is a bunch of mates who know about web design. It’s not some form of Official organisation.
Maybe they should be clearer about the jokey nature of the BritPack, I dunno. Maybe they shouldn’t get so worried about what other people think, too. But it’s because they’re lovely people, and they care. Aah, bless ‘em.
In all seriousness, I would say that if you were unaware of the nature of the people who make up the BritPack, if you didn’t know how it was formed and how it was used, then it might just look like some sort of exclusive members club. On the other hand, maybe the pants logo should be considered a clue…
So I’m here to recommend to the BritPack that they stay as they are. There’s no need for them to publish a membership list, membership criteria or information about what the BritPack is. They’re just having a larf.
On the other hand — as one of the commenters said — if people do want to use it in a professional context, then maybe it should be more open, with more published criteria and so on. For me personally, I wouldn’t like to see that happen. I’m not a member, but I like the BritPack like it is. It’s quirky, it’s a chummy, matey thing, it’s got pants in it. Hurrah!
On the other, other hand of course, the concept of being able to aspire towards becoming a member is a nice one. The BritPack is a cool thing, full of cool people (as anyone who has seen Malarkey with shades on will testify), and it’s only natural to want to be associated with it. The flip side of this is of course that the very nature of the BritPack is that it’s a friends mailing list, so if unknown people who met the professional criteria for joining started arriving, it just wouldn’t work.
So I would tell the BritPack to keep their pants on, and just keep things as they are. Not that it’s really any of my business of course, but Andy did post about it and ask for comments.
On the my fourth and final hand, however (yes, I was counting) I would say that like many other people I can’t help but feel some sort of pang of jealousy. I’m a web developer, and a web designer — although admittedly not at the rarified level of the BritPack — but I’m not ever likely to be a member (boo hoo). I work in Local Government, and so the web design and development I do tends to be very much stamped into someone else’s corporate design. I suppose I do have this site, but I’d rather use this space to rant and rail than to draw pretty pictures (which is the main reason my site redesign is going extremely slowly).
So maybe it’s time, like I suggested on Malarkey’s site, for those of us who work under the public sector banner to have our equivalent to Brit Pack’s pants. Maybe a nice picture of an arse, with a pair of scrunched up union-jack pants pulled down underneath it, and a message reading “Public Sector: It’s Time To Butt Out” or something equally crap with an arse joke in it.
…or then again, maybe not. After all, look at the kerfuffle caused when Andy Clarke and a few mates got together with their own logo…
Hello. I am 
An in-joke about government “joined up-ness” would work great Jack, something along the lines of “[insert group name] - The New Ungroup on the Block.” I can think of loads of taglines but not a group name haha.