Hi my name is Elsa Canto, i’m a web professional from Panama City, Panama.  For more than 10 years I’ve been working with websites, helping people understand that the web is not just another media for senseless advertising: we can do much more with it, if we have a good strategy.

Through the years, I´ve been involved in all the phases of a web project: I began as a web assistant; designing websites, banners and simple html pages.  Then, I worked as a webmaster in several local companies, developing web portals, programming with databases, and other working on some other web projects.  I also worked  for a local financial institution, doing redesigns of both their public websites and their e-banking portals.

In 2005, I founded my own web design agency, Token Studio. From 2005 till 2007,   I focused on managing the company and it’s projects.  It was very difficult considering my little budget and my small team of designers.

I runned the company for 3 years; and the experience was great, but suddenly I realized that I was stucked and out of focus on my web career, taking care of too many administrative issues and not doing the things i loved.  So I decided to merge our agency with Boot Studio, another local web design and information architecture agency.

One of the things I have been doing for a very long time  is web project management.  Thanks to the book that opened my eyes: “Web Redesign – Workflow that Works” from Kelly Goto, I discovered how to better manage my web projects.

Since I have been involved in all the phases of web projects, I haven’t had the opportunity to focus in one specific area of my career (besides project management), and sometimes that makes me feel a little lost.

Today, I see all the new trends and emerging technologies like web 2.0, social networks and web interaction and I realize that the potential for the web and cross-media integration has become so large, that it’s both overwhelming and exciting.

I work as a web project manager in Boot Studio on a daily basis. We have very interesting projects here, but in many occasions I think… that I’m still looking for a new path to evolve my career; maybe it’s project management, IA, UX, design or programming… I don’t know yet, but  I’m still working on it.