freelance web Posts

About Martin Design Philosophy Marketing & Publicity Geek Talk

Some might wonder how I manage to make ends meet with two kids on a Quaker salary and all this blog work. Well, the truth is that I don't. Not quite. Even with pennies pinched the supermarket run is always a struggle. One way I make up the difference is with freelance web work. As of today it now has its own website at martinkelley.com.

In the past few months I've put together Quakersong.org for Peter Blood and Annie Patterson of Rise Up Singing fame, two lovely folks I know from Quaker & activist circles and most recently through their membership at Middletown Meeting (their site has a great Pete Seeger section!). I've also put together a customized blog for journalist James Maguire who liked the design of Nonviolence.org and asked me to put together his site. My latest FGC design is the brand new Youth Ministries site, Quakeryouth.org, which is our most ambitious & interactive yet!

Since coming back from the Gathering I've spent most of my free time ignoring the latest blogger bruhaha to put together Martinkelley.com. There's lots there about my design philosophy and my experiences with online communities (social and commercial). There's also a few silly features: Little Known Facts of outrageous claims. Check it all out and tell your friends and business associates!

New, 8/2/06:

I've added a web design blog, a place to talk design philosophy. How do we use the internet to build a community or a movement? What would a Quaker design aethetic for the internet look like? Sign up or surf over to martinkelley.com/blog.

Just a quick note to everyone that I haven't posted more lately. It's a busy time of the year. I've had my hands full keeping up with articles and links to the Christian Peacemakers.

I've also been doing some freelance sites. One is launched: Quakersong.org, the new online home of Annie Patterson and Peter Blood of Rise Up Singing fame. It's just the start to what should soon be an interesting site.

Geek-wise I've been interested in the Web 2.0 stuff (see this Best Of list of sites, link courtesy C Wess Daniels). I've talked about some of this back in June but it's getting more exciting. In the Fall I was asked to submit a proposal for redoing the website of a Quaker conference center near Philadelphia and it was all Web 2.0-centric--maybe too much so as I didn't get the job! I'll post an edited version of the proposal soon for the geeks out there. Some of the new tech stuff will undergird a fabulous new Quakerfinder.org feature that will allow isolated Friends to connect to form new worship groups (to launch soon) and even more is behind the dreams of a new Quakerbooks.org site.

In the meantime, I encourage everyone to order On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry, the new book by New England Yearly Meeting's Brian Drayton (it arrived from the printers yesterday). It's being billed as a modern day version of "A Description of the Qualifications" and if it lives up the hype it should be an important book for the stirrings of deepening faithfulness we've been seeing among Quakers lately. While you're waiting for the book to arrive in your mailbox, check out Brooklyn Rich's Testing Leadings post.