Vacation from reality

December 5, 2006

Okay, yes it’s insane to go on a vaca­tion when one is unem­ployed. But logis­ti­cal­ly, it’s the best time to go: no jug­gling work sched­ules, no fin­ish­ing up projects before you go, no tak­ing cell phone calls from har­ried col­leagues. Julie had saved up the mon­ey and start­ed plan­ning a get­away this sum­mer and reser­va­tions were all in place when I sud­den­ly found myself out of a job. We could have can­celed but Octo­ber brought us more than our share of dis­ap­point­ments and we decid­ed to go for it. Three guess­es where we are:
Walking right down the middle of Main Street USA Walking right down the middle of Main Street USA Walking right down the middle of Main Street USA Disney family
h3. More photos:

www.flickr.com


See “all the WDW photos”:http://flickr.com/photos/martin_kelley/tags/wdw2006/

On job hunting and the blogging future in Metro Philadelphia

November 29, 2006

I’ve been qui­et on the blogs late­ly, focus­ing on job search­es rather than rant­i­ng. I thought I’d take a lit­tle time off to talk about my lit­tle cor­ner of the career mar­ket. I’ve been apply­ing for a lot of web design and edit­ing jobs but the most inter­est­ing ones have com­bined these togeth­er in cre­ative ways. My qual­i­fi­ca­tions for these jobs are more the inde­pen­dent sites I’ve put togeth­er — notably Quak​erQuak​er​.org—than my paid work for Friends.

For exam­ple: one inter­est­ing job gets repost­ed every few weeks on Craigslist. It’s geared toward adding next-generation inter­ac­tive con­tent to the web­site of a con­sor­tium of sub­ur­ban news­pa­pers (appli­cants are asked to be “com­fort­able with terms like blog, vlog, CSS, YourHub, MySpace, YouTube…,” etc.). The qual­i­fi­ca­tions and vision are right up my alley but I’m still wait­ing to hear any­thing about the appli­ca­tion I sent by email and snail mail a week ago. Despite this, they’re con­tin­u­ing to post revised descrip­tions to Craigslist. Yes­ter­day’s ver­sion dropped the “con­ver­gence” lin­go and also dropped the pro­ject­ed salary by about ten grand.

About two months ago I actu­al­ly got through to an inter­view for a fab­u­lous job that con­sist­ed of putting togeth­er a blog­ging com­mu­ni­ty site to fea­ture the lesser-known and quirky busi­ness­es of Philadel­phia. I had a great inter­view, thought I had a good chance at the job and then heard noth­ing. Days turned to weeks as my follow-up com­mu­ni­ca­tions went unan­swered. 11/30 Update: a friend just guessed the group I was talk­ing about and emailed that the site did launch, just qui­et­ly. It looks good.

Cor­po­rate blog­ging is said to be the wave of the future and in only a few years polit­i­cal cam­paigns have come to con­sid­er blog­gers as an essen­tial tool in get­ting their mes­sage out. User-generated con­tent has become essen­tial feed­back and pub­lic­i­ty mech­a­nisms. My expe­ri­ence from the Quak­er world is that blog­gers are con­sti­tut­ing a new kind of lead­er­ship, one that’s both more out­go­ing but also thought­ful and vision­ary (I should post about this some­time soon). Blogs encour­age open­ness and trans­paren­cy and will sure­ly affect orga­ni­za­tion­al pol­i­tics more and more in the near future. Smart com­pa­nies and non­prof­its that want to grow in size and influ­ence will have to learn to play well with blogs.

But the future is lit­tle suc­cor to the present. In the Philadel­phia met­ro­pol­i­tan area it seems that the rare employ­er that’s think­ing in these terms have have a lot of back and forths try­ing to work out the job descrip­tion. Well, I only need one enlight­ened employ­er! It’s time now to put the boys to bed, then check the job boards again. Keep us in your prayers.

The new aggregators

October 13, 2006

A look at the new class of “Sin­gle Page Aggregators.”

Way back in 1997 I was one of dozens of lots of web design­ers trying
to fig­ure out how to bring an edi­to­r­i­al voice to the inter­net. The web
had tak­en off and there pages and links every­where but few places where
they were actu­al­ly orga­nized in a use­ful man­ner. As I’ve writ­ten before,
in Decem­ber of that year I start­ed a week­ly updat­ed list of annotated
links to arti­cles on non­vi­o­lence, a form we’d now would rec­og­nize as a
blog.

About
eigh­teen months ago I start­ed a “links blog” of inter­est­ing Quaker
links, incor­po­rat­ed as a side­bar on my pop­u­lar “Quak­er­Ran­ter” personal
blog. I even­tu­al­ly gave the links their own URL (Quak​erQuak​er​.org)
and invit­ed oth­ers to join the link­ing. I always stum­ble when try­ing to
tell peo­ple what Quak­erQuak­er is all about. The best def­i­n­i­tion is that
its a “col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly edit­ed blog aggre­ga­tor” but that’s a horribly
tech description.

The rise of blogs is cre­at­ing the neces­si­ty for these sort of theme-based aggre­ga­tors. This morn­ing I stum­bled on Orig­i­nal Sig­nal, a new site that organzes the best Web 2.0 blogs. A site called Pop­URLs does the same for “the lat­est web buzz.” A site called Solu­tion­Watch has writ­ten about these in Track­ing the web with Sin­gle Page Aggre­ga­tors. We’re all on to some­thing here. I sus­pect that some­time this fall some clever per­son will coin a new term for these sites.

Teaching Quakerism again

October 5, 2006

Quakerism 101 classes at Moorestown Meeting NJGet­ting right back on the horse, I’m teach­ing Quak­erism 101 at Moorestown NJ Meet­ing Wednes­day evenings start­ing in a few weeks. The orig­i­nal plan was for the most excel­lent Thomas Swain to lead it but he’s become rather busy after being tapped to be year­ly meet­ing clerk (God bless ‘im). He’ll be there for the first ses­sion, I’ll be on my own for the rest. A rather small group has signed up so it should be nice and intimate.

For the last year I’ve been pon­der­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties of using mid-week reli­gious edu­ca­tion and wor­ship as a form of out­reach. Emer­gent Church types love small group oppor­tu­ni­ties out­side of the Sun­day morn­ing time slot and it seems that mid-week wor­ship is one of those old on-the-verge-of-death Quak­er tra­di­tions that might be worth revi­tal­iz­ing and recast­ing in an Emergent-friendly format.

Last Spring I spent a few months reg­u­lar­ly attend­ing one of the few sur­viv­ing mid-week wor­ships in the area and I found it intrigu­ing and full of pos­si­bil­i­ties but nev­er felt led to do more. It seemed that atten­ders came and went each week with­out con­nect­ing deeply to one anoth­er or get­ting any seri­ous ground­ing in Quakerism.

Reflect­ing on the gen­e­sis of a strong Philadel­phia young adult group in the mid-1990s, it seemed like the ide­al recipe would look some­thing like this:

  • 6pm: reg­u­lar reli­gious ed time, not super-formal but real and pastoral-based. This would be an open, non-judgemental time where atten­ders would be free to share spir­i­tu­al insights but they would also learn the ortho­dox Quak­er take on the issue or con­cern (Bar­clay essentially).
  • 7pm: mid-week wor­ship, unprogrammed
  • 8pm: unof­fi­cial but reg­u­lar hang-out time, peo­ple going in groups to local din­ers, etc.

Unpro­grammed wor­ship just isn’t enough (just when y’all thought I was a dyed-in-the-plain-cloth Wilbu­rite…). Peo­ple do need time to be able to ask ques­tions and explore spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in a more struc­tured way. Those of us led to teach­ing need to be will­ing to say “this is the Quak­er take on this issue” even if our answer would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly pass con­sen­sus in a Friends meeting.

Peo­ple also need time to social­ize. We live in an atom­ized soci­ety and the brunt of this iso­la­tion is borne by young adults start­ing careers in unfa­mil­iar cities and towns: Quak­er meet­ing can act as a place to plug into a social net­work and pro­vide real com­mu­ni­ty. It’s dif­fer­ent from enter­tain­ment, but rather identity-building. How do we shift think­ing from “those Quak­ers are cool” to “I’m a Quak­er and I’m cool” in such a way that these new Friends under­stand that there are chal­lenges and dis­ci­plines involved in tak­ing on this new role.

Per­haps the three parts to the mid-week wor­ship mod­el is head, spir­it and heart; what­ev­er labels you give it we need to think about feed­ing and nur­tur­ing the whole seek­er and to chal­lenge them to more than just silence. This is cer­tain­ly a com­mon mod­el. When Peg­gy Sen­ger Par­sons and Alivia Biko came to the FGC Gath­er­ing and shared Free­dom Friends wor­ship with us it had some of this feel. For awhile I tagged along with Julie to what’s now called The Col­legium Cen­ter which is a Sun­day night Catholic mass/religious ed/diner three-some that was always packed and that pro­duced at least one cou­ple (good friends of ours now!).

I don’t know why I share all this now, except to put the idea in oth­er peo­ple’s heads too. The four weeks of Wednes­day night reli­gious ed at Moorestown might have some­thing of this feel; it will be inter­est­ing to see.

For those inter­est­ed in cur­ricu­lum details, I’m bas­ing it on Michael Birkel’s Silence and Wit­ness: the Quak­er Tra­di­tion (Orbis, 2004. $16.00). Michael’s tried to pull togeth­er a good gen­er­al intro­duc­tion to Friends, some­thing sure­ly need­ed by Friends today (much as I respect Howard Brin­ton’s Friends for 300 Years it’s get­ting old in the tooth and speaks more to the issues of mid-century Friends than us). Can Silence and Wit­ness anchor a Quak­erism 101 course? We’ll see.

As sup­ple­men­tary mate­r­i­al I’m using Thomas Ham­m’s Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca (Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2003, $45), Ben Pink-Dandelion’s Con­vinced Quak­erism: 2003 Wal­ton Lec­ture (South­east­ern Year­ly Meet­ing Wal­ton Lec­ture, 2003, $4.00), Mar­ty Grundy’s Quak­er Trea­sure (Bea­con Hill Friends House Weed Lec­ture, 2002, $4.00) and the class Bill Tabor pam­phlet Four Doors to Quak­er Wor­ship (Pen­dle Hill, 1992, $5.00). Atten­tive read­ers will see echos from my pre­vi­ous Quak­erism 101 class at Med­ford Meet­ing.

For something completely different…

October 2, 2006

In the news front, I’m no longer work­ing at FGC. Rea­sons are com­pli­cat­ed, as is often the case. In eight years I did some good work with some great peo­ple. I’ll be miss­ing the hard-working and faith­ful col­leagues and com­mit­tee mem­bers I got to serve with over the years. I’ll be work­ing on build­ing my tech career and look for­ward to new chal­lenges. Tran­si­tions are always a bit scary, so hold us in your prayers in this time.

The Gorillas and Chimps of the Social Networking Scene

September 18, 2006

Over on the New York Times, an arti­cle about a new Nickolodeon-created web­site for parents

now in the final stages of beta testing. 

In a non­pub­lic test of the site over the sum­mer by about
1,000 recruit­ed par­tic­i­pants, exec­u­tives learned that these users
want­ed to blog; now, every user with a pro­file can, Ms. Rep­pen said.
Through the beta test, which is now open to new mem­bers, Nick is
learn­ing that par­ents want spaces to sell their crafts, a separate
Chris­t­ian home-schooling dis­cus­sion and big­ger type on the Web site.
Local dis­cus­sion boards will also be added, as will user-generated
video.

They also quote a Nis­san mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive, who says that
“com­mu­ni­ty sites are one of the big phe­nom­e­non hap­pen­ing on line this
year.”

There is a big shift going on.

It’s star­tling to real­ize that my three year tod­dler is almost the same age as Myspace and old­er than Face­book.
In just a few short years they’ve come to dom­i­nate much of the online
world, espe­cial­ly with under-25 users. The kind of inde­pen­dent blogs
that dom­i­nate a sites like Live­jour­nal and Blogspot don’t have the web
of cross-connections – what I called the “folk­so­nom­ic den­si­ty” – of the new
social net­work­ing sites. It seems appro­pri­ate that Myspace was found­ed by spam­mers: who knows more about suck­ing peo­ple in?

The ques­tion: will the net have room for inde­pen­dent niche sites?
Myspace is chang­ing its archi­tec­ture to dis­able key link­ing fea­tures of
third-party embed­ded plug-ins like the from the pop­u­lar video site Youtube. The big search sites also want a piece of this mar­ket – new fea­tures on Yahoo local and the geo­t­agged maps
on Yahoo’s Flickr are impres­sive). It all reminds me some of the
debates about local food co-ops ver­sus enlight­ened super­mar­kets: is it
a good thing that organ­ic pro­duce and soymilk can be pur­chased at the
local Acme, even if that cuts into the inde­pen­dent co-op’s business?
Don’t we want every­one to have access to every­thing? In the end,
phi­los­o­phy won’t set­tle this argument.

Tweaking the blogs for hyperlocal content

September 4, 2006

Inter­est­ing arti­cle over the Move­able­type blog. Anil Dash inter­views George John­son Jr of Hyper­local Media, who’s using MT as a con­tent sys­tem to build hyper­local com­mu­ni­ty sites that can com­pete against local news­pa­pers (see their very-cool look­ing Buf­faloRis­ing site). 

Here’s some of what John­son has to say:

Dis­tri­b­u­tion, con­tent cre­ation, and the abil­i­ty to more
eas­i­ly com­pete with estab­lished local play­ers online… blog­ging is
per­fect for that. I mean a blog is chrono­log­i­cal­ly arranged, in
columns, divid­ed by cat­e­gories and changes (in many cas­es) everyday.
That’s the broad def­i­n­i­tion of a news­pa­per, right? A blog is so much
more than that, but the basic struc­ture lends itself very well to
devel­op­ing an online com­peti­tor for newspapers.

It was three years ago that I fol­lowed Brad Choate’s instruc­tions for using Move­able Type as a whole-site con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem.
What start­ed as an exper­i­ment became a way of life for me. The MT
inter­face lends itself so well to con­tent man­age­ment that I’m now using
it for my non-techie clients: Quak​er​song​.org and Quak​ery​outh​.org
are both put togeth­er by MT and I’ve been sur­prised that there’s been
almost no learn­ing curve for the clien­t’s adop­tion of this software. 

Giv­en this, it seems odd that the kids at Move­able Type haven’t
tak­en MT in this direc­tion (even more sur­pris­ing since they hired Brad
him­self a few years ago!). I see a big mar­ket in my niche sites for
this sort of func­tion­al­i­ty and three years lat­er I’m still hav­ing to
tweak tem­plates to get this to work. Anil, what’s up? If Dru­pal had bet­ter doc­u­men­ta­tion and smoother instal­la­tion it would have been the brawn behind Mar​tinKel​ley​.com.

It would be fun to fol­low Until Mon­day’s exam­ple and cre­ate a
hyper­local site (hint hint to VW if she’s read­ing this). Of course,
local­i­ty is not just geographically-based any­more. Quak​erquak​er​.org is a local por­tal of a dif­fer­ent kind. I’m a big believ­er that the hyper­local­i­ty of niche and geo­graph­ic sites are the cut­ting edge in the next-wave of the social web.

There’s a lot of pio­neer­ing to be done in this regards. The net has
a lot of pow­er to take down cul­ture monop­o­lies by con­fronting old boy
net­works and business-as-usual think­ing with inno­v­a­tive social networks
that har­ness the tal­ents of the out­siders. The smart newspapers,
mag­a­zines, church­es and cul­tur­al orga­ni­za­tions will come on board and
leap-frog them­selves to twenty-first cen­tu­ry rel­e­vance. Too many of the
Philadel­phia (and/or) Quak­er insti­tu­tions I know respond to change by
shuf­fling job titles and putting blind­ers up against rec­og­niz­ing the
ever-narrower demo­graph­ic they serve. 

Munching on the wheat

September 2, 2006

There have been a few recent posts about the state of the Quak­er blo­gos­phere. New blog­ger Richard M wrote about “Anger on the Quak­er blogs”:http://quakerphilosopher.blogspot.com/2006/08/anger-on-quaker-blogosphere.html and LizOpp replied back with ” Pop­corn in the Q‑blogosphere?”:http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2006/08/popcorn-in-q-blogosphere.html.

Con­tin­ue read­ing