Ning Web Design

One of the great things about Web 2.0 is the empowerment of average users. With Twitter and Facebook pages, individuals can now respond back to companies and organizations with a few strokes of the keyboard. Google's recently entered the fray with an intriguing project called Sidewiki. Once again, companies and nonprofits interested in managing their online brands need to be aware of the new medium and how to track it.

What is Sidewiki?
Google started its sidewiki project in September 2009. It's a sidebar that can attach to any page on the internet via the Google Toolbar. Users gain the ability to comment on any page on the internet. Google uses a ranking system based on votes and various algorithms to determine the order of the comments.

When a user of the Google Toolbar visits a page with Sidewiki notes they see a small blue button of the left side of the page with two white chevrons (see screenshot on the right). Clicking on this opens the Sidewiki sidebar. Here they will see comments left by previous visitors. They are be able to add their own comments.

Visionaries have long dreamed of a web with this kind of two-way communication but similar sidebar commenting systems have failed to gain enough momentum to become viable. If this were just another venture-capital-fueled attempt, it would be something marketers could ignore unless and until it became widely used. But with Google behind Sidewiki, it's a service we need to take seriously from the start.

Users Talking Back
When we put together websites, we get to control the message of our little corner of the internet--we have the final say on the material we present. If Sidewiki becomes popular, this will no longer be true. Fans, disgruntled employees and competitors can all start marking up our sites--yikes! But those brands that have embraced the Web 2.0 model will love another place where they can interact with their audience. Today's marketing goal is mindshare--how much of a user's attention span can you win over. The more you get visitors to think about your brand or your message, the more likely that they will buy or recommend your product or service. You need to be active on whatever online channel your audience is using.

Watching the Conversations
What's a good brand manager to do? The first thing is to make sure you have the latest version of Google Toolbar installed on your working browser (get it here) and that you have the Sidewiki service enabled (I've started a Sidewiki for this entry so if it's working you'll see the blue button in your browser).

Brand Management
Google allows website owners the first comment. If you are registered as the owner of a site via Google Webmaster Tools, then you get first say: when you post to the Sidewiki of a page you control, Google gives you the top spot. This is very good. Should you do it?

Probably not. At least not yet. I don't see people using Sidewiki yet. Most websites still don't have any comments. Even Google's projects often fail to gain traction and there's no guarantee that Sidewiki will take off. If your page doesn't have any comments, I wouldn't recommend that you make the first. If there are no Sidewiki entries, the blue button won't be there and visitors probably won't even think to comment.

If you notice that a visitor has started a Sidewiki for your site by leaving a comment, then it's time to log into your Google Webmasters account and leave an official welcome message. Even though you're second to the conversation, you will get first position thanks to your ownership of the website.

The introductory note should briefly welcome visitors. It will appear alongside your website so there's no need to repeat your mission statement, but it is a place where you can give helpful navigation tips and stress any actionable items that the casual visitor might miss. You might consider inviting visitors to sign up for your site's email list, for example.

The Future
Users can tie their Sidewiki comments into Twitter and Facebook accounts. They can leave video comments. If the service takes off there will surely be a mini-industry built around comment optimization. Spammers will get hard at work to game the system. But none is really happening now. Despite a bit of fear-mongering on marketing blogs, Google Sidewiki is a long ways away from being something to lose sleep over. 

More Information:

• Google Sidewiki page
• Sidewiki Bookmarklet (useful for browsers without Google Toolbar support)
  
• Google Toolbar Wikipedia entry
• Techcrunch on the Sidewiki debut
• Google Webmaster Tools

Many Friends will know me from my active involvement in the Quaker world. I've been dubbed the "Quaker Blogfather" for my Quaker Ranter (site) blog and my work in pulling together QuakerQuaker (site), an online magazine and blogging community with over five hundred members and 10,000 visitors a month. I am also a frequent Quaker workshop leader and published writer.

I started building websites in 1995 with an award-winning Nonviolence.org hub site and was a social media pioneer when I redesigned its homepage to a blog format three years later. Before going independent as MartinKelley.com in 2006, I served on the staff of Friends General Conference (site) for eight years, where I worked in the FGC Quaker bookstore and built the Quakerfinder, FGC Gathering and youth ministry sites. I also worked for Friends Journal (site) for two years, putting select articles from their Quaker magazine online every month. Since then I've been privileged to work with Quaker organizations such as Friends World Committee for Consultation (site), Friends Council on Education (site) and Haverford Friends Meeting (site). I've done some exciting media work with the Philadelphia Penn Charter School (site) and built personal sites for well known Friends. I bring our testimony of integrity to every business transaction and when I address topics such as search engine optimization or pricing philosophy, I try to do so from a Friends perspective.

Web Design Specialties:

A local client from Tabernacle in Burlington County came to me with an interesting project. He's owned a commercial cleaning company for a number of years and has heard his share of horror stories about the cleaning services clients hired before finding him! This experience led him to write a PDF e-book about how to hire the right cleaning service. What a great idea and a what a useful book this is for small business owners.

The site's on a bit of a budget so it's a simple design, with colors and general look-and-feel borrowed from a site the client likes. Simple editing comes via CushyCMS. When customers click to buy, they are sent to Paypal for the actual transaction and then forwarded to E-Junkie, which provides the automated and integrated PDF download.

Visit the site: Office Manager's Guide to Hiring the Best Cleaning Service

Collected from the LinkedIn:

"Martin has provided -- and continues to provide excellent service and consultation as a Web site developer. For my site on New York-based architecture and history, Mindfulwalker.com, I asked for some complex developments of and changes to a WordPress theme and the site installation. I received the service that I needed and more, and I'm very happy with the site today. Martin brings a variety of assets to his role: He is extremely knowledgeable and capable in programming and Web tools. He's also a good communicator, is very value-conscious about the service he delivers for the cost, and is understanding of client needs. Beyond this, Martin helped with some excellent tutorials as I took over the site. I plan to hire Martin again as I look forward to enhancements and additional developments for my site and business. Martin is excellent at what he does!" May 10, 2009

Susan DeMark, Journalist.
Hired Martin as a Graphic/Web Designer in 2007
Top qualities: Great Results, Good Value, High Integrity

"Martin provided great value in designing a website for my law practice. He was accessible and facilitated the process, despite our geographical distance, through email and telephone consultations. He was flexible in working with me to achieve what I was looking for within my budget." May 1, 2009

John Kindley, Lawyer.
Hired Martin as a Graphic/Web Designer in 2008
Top qualities: Personable, Good Value, High Integrity

"Martin is not only highly competent as a Web site developer, he's also one of the most honest and trustworthy people I've ever hired. I highly recommend Martin." April 30, 2009

James Maguire, Author.
Hired Martin as a Graphic/Web Designer in 2006, and hired Martin more than once.
Top qualities: Great Results, Personable, Expert

"Martin has worked for our school to integrate Web 2.0 technologies into our communication materials. Martin is highly-personable and his is an expert in current technological approaches. This is a hard match to find in consultants." April 30, 2009

Michael Moulton, Technology Director, William Penn Charter School.
Hired Martin as a IT Consultant in 2007, and hired Martin more than once.
Top qualities: Personable, Expert, High Integrity.

"Martin has an outstanding grasp of everything there is to know about the internet. He is our "go-to" guy whenever we encounter something new and different, especially involving Web 2.0 and Search Engine optimization. He is also an experienced and skilled designer and has excellent PHP/CSS/HTML programming knowledge. Martin is a pleasure to work with in every respect!" May 1, 2009

    Barbara Raphael, Founder/Owner/Designer/Developer, Raphael Webscapes, LLC.
    Worked directly with Martin at Raphael Webscapes.

I once read an insightful observation about the geo-location revolution that came about with the popularlization of cell phones: In the old days of POTS (your landline, literally "plain old telephone service") when you dialed a number you knew where you were calling but you didn't know who was going to pick up. With cell phones that was reversed: you knew who you were calling but you had no idea where they were.

Only, this wasn't quite true. To find someone you'd have to call their house, their workplace, their cellphone. What you were really calling wasn't the person but one of their phones. Much of the time you'd end up with voicemail.

Well, the promise of the geolocation revolution has been taken to its logical conclusion. I've finally gotten my invitation to Google Voice, formerly Grand Central, the personalized telephone switching service that the big-G is opening up to U.S. customers this summer. It's free and it gives you the ultimate in virtuality: a phone number that is not connected to any phone. When people call your Google Voice number, any number of phones start ringing. Which one you answer depends on your geography and convenience.

I have three phones set to ring on Google Voice calls depending on the type of call: my cell phone, my home phone and my computer (a Skype plan with it's own incoming phone number). If I'm dissatisfied with the phone I'm on I can press the star key to have all my phones ring anew and transfer the call seamlessly (a very addictive past-time).  It's a fascinating evolution of the phone into a virtual communication device.

Intrigued? You can sign up for a Google Voice invite from its site. It's not a perfect system. To use it most effectively requires changing your phoning habits and making a very serious switch. I suggest Lifehacker's guide "How to Ease Your Transition to Google Voice" as a good place to start.

Ginny Christensen is the force behind Strategy for Growth, LLC, a Wyncote, PA consulting firm that provides strategic planning, board development, executive coaching, and leadership team development for independent schools and nonprofits. The site is fairly simple. It's built in WordPress and has rudimentary e-commerce with a Paypal option for purchasing books.

Visit: StrategyForGrowth.com

I'd like to talk today about social media and nonprofits. I've had a couple of interesting projects lately helping nonprofits put together Facebook Pages, LinkedIn Groups and Twitter sites. I think this is an exciting way to reach out to audience members.

Today: Email Lists

Over the last few years we've focused on email lists. We all have big email lists--tens of thousands of users, segmented all sorts of different ways. We send out dozens of emails a week and they end up seeming not spam.

Facebook Pages

A new era is coming with social media. A big change is Facebook Pages. These are geared toward advertisers although you don't need to have a Facebook advertising campaign to use them. In March 2009, Facebook redesigned Pages to act much more like typical user profiles: there's a wall, there's an activity stream, and you can associate different applications with them.

Two things about Pages are exciting. One is the activity stream. People who sign up as "fans" of your Page see what you're putting out in their individual stream. They'll log into Facebook and see that messages like "Jen just got engaged!" or "Joe is having a bad hair day" and that your organization is having some great event coming up this weekend. You're seen in the association of happy news from their friends. It's different from a spammish email because it's coming in with the context of their friends, which is very powerful for publicity.

The other nice thing about Facebook Pages is that they're public. A lot of portions of Facebook aren't but making Pages public means you can point to them from your website or other social media campaigns.

I think Facebook fan groups are going to be the new email list. They are the way we'll be able to reach out to people. I'm very excited about this because there's all sorts of easy multimedia possibilities. You can integrate with Youtube, with Twitter, with podcasts, etc., embedded for fans of your Facebook page to see as it's happening. This is much more exciting than some of the emails that we send out. They are also more interactive because fans can post things on your fan walls so you can have conversations on your sites.

Intimate, immediate, engaging

What the smart nonprofits are going to be doing is a lot of posting in a style that's authentic and intimate and less worried about being slick than we've typically been.

What I would love to see nonprofits doing is to get serious about video. I'm not talking about fancy video, hauling in videographers for six months shooting a three minute slick commercial. Get an inexpensitve video recorder and start doing five minute interviews with the people your organization serves. This will differ depending on your organization's focus. One advantage to simple videos is that you can convince even the busiest of your interviewees to take out a few minutes. You make these videos and post them to Youtube, Vimeo or directly to Facebook video. It doesn't matter where they hosted but you'll have to make sure they're embedded on your Facebook fan page.

Building our Facebook Fan Page

How to direct? You can direct in the emails you're sending out or through other sources. Twitter is a great way of directing people to what's happening: you send out a 140-character "tweet" with an interesting tease about the video you've produced and a link to the Facebook fan page.

The whole goal is to get Facebook fans. Once you're in as a fan, you show up in their activity streams. All the fans get to see the events you're organizing, the videos. If you have extra tickets to an upcoming event, post about it because people will see it immediately. It's a wonderful way to reach people quickly in a way that's not as intrusive as email (I suspect a lot of younger users are actually checking their Facebook homepage more often than their emails!).

The New Nonprofit Outreach

I'd love to see a lot more of these intimate, almost home-made videos going up on Facebook fan pages and using fan pages as a way of connecting with people. We can think of these as the new email list.

I would strongly encourage nonprofits to use all of these these media to reinforce their message and to find new ways to reach their audiences in a much more engaging, intimate way.

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Martin Kelley is a web developer and social media consultant specializing in nonprofits. This post is a loose transcription of his video, Nonprofits and Social Media. This essay is also available on the MartinKelley.com Facebook fan page.

John Kindley is a lawyer in a solo practice in South Bend, Indiana. He came to me wanting a web design make-over for his self-designed WordPress site, along with some SEO advice and help with a form. John's a bit of a tinkerer so he's already moved on to a new design!

Visit: Kindley Law in South Bend Indiana

Client Testimonial:

"Martin provided great value in designing a website for my law practice. He was accessible and facilitated the process, despite our geographical distance, through email and telephone consultations. He was flexible in working with me to achieve what I was looking for within my budget." May 1, 2009

John Kindley, Lawyer.
Hired Martin as a Graphic/Web Designer in 2008
Top qualities: Personable, Good Value, High Integrity

My Twitter followers will know I've been slightly obsessed by Google's new browser, Chrome, since word leaked that it was going to be released today (Tues, Sept 2). I've been hitting reload on the download site fairly obsessively. A few minutes ago my persistence was rewarded and I'm writing to you all from the new browser (here's the official release announcement).

This is part of my Beyond SEO series where I look at the myths and realities behind search engine optimization, with practical tips about publicizing your site and building your personal brand. Read all of my Beyond SEO articles.

The Google blog asks for user input into what makes a good SEO and reports that they've just rewritten their page that warns against rogue SEO artists and gives recommendations about what to look out for. It starts with their definition

SEO is an acronym for "search engine optimization" or "search engine optimizer." Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site. Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners.

The blog asks "how would you define SEO? What questions would you ask a prospective SEO?" I've been doing a lot more optimization for clients lately. What's particularly fun is running across the work of the SEO scam artists their competition have brought in. I've seen many instances where the other SEO firm has stepped over the bounds of fair practice and been penalized by Google.

Google's job and our job

I've always taken the approach that it's Google's job to give people the most useful and relevant return for their search and our job to make sure we have useful and relevant material and arrange it in such a way that Google can access it.

SEO is important but only in the context of smart web design and a coherent and well thought out internet marketing strategy. Firms that claim to do SEO without checking the analytics data and consulting with the client about their business strategy will not help the site in the long run.

What your SEO expert should be doing

I would agree with most of Google's recommendations of what to look out against. But what to look for? A quick list would include:

• A SEO consultant that looks at analytics data before making any changes. If the client doesn't already have Google Analytics running on the site I install it and wait a month before doing anything. I do that because you want:
• Quantifiable results. You should be able to see shifting use patterns if the optimization is working. The internet gives us precise figures and it's often very easy to demonstrate the value of the work you've done. Clients should have full access to the analytics and be trained enough to be able to independently verify the results.
• A consultant that frequently answers questions with "Hmmm..., I don't know." No one knows what Google is doing. You try something, then you try something else. Anyone who claims to know everything is scamming you.
• Someone who looks at your entire business model and asks hard questions about your internet strategy. What do you hope to accomplish with your site. Are there specific goals that we can measure?
• Think about your Inbound and Outbound strategies. Google will send people your way if you have useful material so think about what compelling content you can offer the universe. And once people come to the site you have to make it compelling for them to stay a while, subscribe, etc.
• The SEO consultant should make you sweat: anyone who says they can significantly boost your site without you having to lift a finger is fooling you. You will almost always have to add compelling content and it will take you committing staff time to the project (a good development team will look for ways to make this fit into your existing staff routines so that it's as painless as possible!).

Any others suggestions for what to look for in potential SEO consultants?

I was recently working with a client who has a large Google Adwords campaign, with an annual ad budget in the low six figures. He's been very careful about the keywords he's chosen and we've both poured over the Google Analytics figures to see how the campaign progressed.

It took a third party keyword tracking system to discover that many of the ads were being served up to wrong keywords in the Google searches. I want to keep the client's identity private, so let me use an analogy: say you're a boomerang maker and you've bought a campaign intending ads to show up for those who search "boomerang" in Google. What we discovered is that Google was serving up a large percentage of these ads for searchers of "frisbees" -- close, but not close enough for searchers to care. Few people clicked on the misplaced ad. We're talking serious money wasted on ads served up to the wrong target audience.

How did a carefully constructed ad campaign get on so many poorly-targeted searches? Google allows fuzzy matching under their broad match guidelines:

For example, if you're currently running ads on the broad-matched keyword web hosting, your ads may show for the search queries web hosting company or webhost. The keyword variations that are allowed to trigger your ads will change over time, as the AdWords system continually monitors your keyword quality and performance factors. Your ads will only continue showing on the highest-performing and most relevant keyword variations.

You can disable these broad searches using negative keywords (i.e., "-frisbee") and with specific keywords ("boomerang").

But Google does not make it easy to see just where your ads are going. You have to set up a special Search query performance report. It's really essential that anyone doing a large Google Ad campaign set up one of these searches and have it automatically emailed to them every month. Google clearly wasn't tracking the "performance" of its broad search on this client's ad. I'm particularly disturbed that we didn't see these misdirected keywords listed in the Google Analytics tracking reports. It is dangerous to use the same company to both sell you a service and to report how well it's been doing.

Credit where it's due: it was the excellent long-tail blog content service Hittail that gave us the information that Google was misdirecting its ads. See my previous Hittail coverage.

Web 2.0 tools have changed the boundary lines between techies and program staff in many nonprofits over the past few years. At least, they should have, though I know of various organizations that haven't made the conceptual leap to the new roles.

OLD SCHOOL: Webmaster

Let me explain by talking about my own changing work role. Even a few years ago, I was a paid staff webmaster. You could divide my work into two large categories. The first was techie: I managed server accounts, set up required databases, designed sites. I got into the HTML code, the PHP, the Javascript, CSS, etc.

The other was content: when program-oriented staff had new material they wanted on the website they would email it to me or walk it over. I would put in my work queue, where it might sit for weeks if it wasn't an organizational priority. When it came time to add the material I would boot up Dreamweaver, a relatively expensive program that was only accessible from my laptop and I would put the material onto the website. Needless to say, with a process like this some parts of the website never got very much attention.

At some point I start sneaking in a content management system for frequently-changed pages. This seemed very hackish and not good at first but over time I realized it greatly speeded up my turn-around time for basic text content. But the organizations I worked for still relied on the old model, where staff give the webmaster content to put up.

NEW SCHOOL: Web Developer

Nowadays I'm a web developer, a freelancer with an ever changing list of clients. I typically spend about a month putting together a site based on a content management (like this) or automatic feed system (like I did for Philadelphia's William Penn Charter School). I do a certain amount of training and while I might add a little content for testing purposes, I step back at the end of the process to let the client put the material up themselves. I'm available for questions but I'm surprised about how rarely I'm called.

Here's two examples. Steadyfootsteps is a blog by an American physical therapist in Vietnam. When we started, she didn't even have a digital camera! I gave her advice on cameras, started her on a Flickr account, set up a fairly generic Movable Type blog with some custom design elements and answered all the questions she had along the way. She went to town. She's put tons of pictures and embedded Youtube videos right in posts. Here's a non-techie who has contributed a lot to the web's content!

Penn Charter is a school that was already on Flickr and Youtube but wanted to display the content on their website in an attractive way. I pulled together all the magic of feeds and javascripts to have a media page that showcases the newest material.

They're very different sites, but in neither instance does the client contact me to add content. They rely on easy-to-use Web 2.0 services: no specialized HTML knowledge required.

NEW TOOLS, OLD MODEL

I got an email not so long ago from an old boss who manages a monthly magazine. Her site has been radically rebuilt over the years. Dreamweaver is out and content management is in. They use Drupal, which my friend Thomas T. of the Philadelphia Cultural Alliance tells me won the recent popularity contest among nonprofit techies. This is great, a definite step forward, but what confused me is that my old boss was asking me whether I would be interested in returning to my old job (the successor who oversaw the Drupal upgrade is leaving).

They still have a webmaster? They still want to funnel website material through a single person? Every staffperson there is adept at computers. If a physical therapist can figure out Flickr and Movable Type and Youtube, why can't professional print designers and editors?

My hourly rate ranges from two to five times what she'd be likely to pay, so I turned her down. But I did ask why she wanted a webmaster. Now that they're on Drupal it seems to me that they'd be better off switching from the webmaster to the web developer staffing model: hire me as a freelance consultant to do troubleshooting, staff training and the occassional special project but have the regular fulltime staff do the bulk of the content management. I'd think you'd end up with a site that's more lively and updated and that the cost would about the same, despite my higher hourly rates.

I've heard enough stories of places where secretaries have come out of the shadows to embrace content management and have helped transform websites. I'm the son of a former secretary so I know that they're often the smartest employees at any firm (if you walk into an office looking for the expert on advanced Excel features you'll surely find them sitting right there behind the receptionist desk).


FINALLY: WHAT'S UP WITH DRUPAL?

I'm trying to join the bandwagon and use Drupal for a upcoming site that will have about a dozen editors. But there's no built-in WYSIWYG editor, no little formatting icons. Sure, I myself could easily hand-code the HTML and make it look nice. But I don't want to do that. And it's unrealistic to think I'm going to teach a dozen overworked secretaries how to write in HTML. The interface needs to work more or less like Microsoft Word (as it does in Movable Type, CushyCMS, Google Docs, etc.)

Most Drupal sites I see seems from the outside like they're still old school: staff webmaster through whom most content funnels. Is this right? Because if so, this is really just an institutionalization of the content hack I did six years ago. Can anyone point me to lively, active Drupal sites whose content is being directly added by non-techie office staff? If so, how is it set up?

I just purchased a MacBook and have the joy of learning a new set of routines and programs, all while reconfiguring my services again. I've used Macs in various work settings but the bulk of my development time has been on Windows, most recently XP.

I will recommend VMWare's Fusion for other Windows users making the switch. Fusion is an $80 program that lets you run Windows through Mac (you have to pay for a fresh version of Windows, a copy of XP put me back $200 at Staples). Apple has an alternative called Boot Camp which lets you install Windows so you can start up in it when you start your computer. This presumably runs faster (there's no Mac OS overhead while in Windows) but Fusion is much more practical since I'm using simultaneously with my Mac programs. The speed is fine, even with lots of Mac programs running. Fusion is also more flexible about disk space allocations.

I'm quite amazed about what it can do. Netflix's Watch Now service is unavailable for Macs but runs fine through my Fusion-powered Windows XP. The Rhapsody music client also works and I'm listening to music as I'm running my Mac programs. In an amazing feat, I was able to use Rhapsody to sync songs on my Palm T/X via USB cable. This is Windows XP running atop Mac OS X syncing digital rights managed-protected data with Palm OS over USB. Really amazing that it all worked!

I'm sticking with Windows XP because of all the nightmare stories I've heard about Vista, but also because it uses less memory and so will run faster. Also, I know XP very well and don't really relish the thought of learning a whole new system in addition to Mac OS. I'm presuming that over time I'll use Windows less and less and will just have it for browser cross-checking purposes and to run the occasional Windows-only software like Rhapsody and Netflix.

Martin has worked with over two dozen nonprofit organizations, often serving as webmaster and internet evangelist:

A.J. Muste Memorial Institute
American Friends Service Committee
Center on Conscience and War
Cornerstone Fellowship, Galloway NJ
Council of Parishes of Southern New Jersey
Episcopal Peace Fellowship
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Friends Council on Education
Friends General Conference
Friends Institute
Friends Journal
Haverford (PA) Friends Meeting
Haddonfield Foundation
Global Network for Nonviolence
Indymedia.org
International Nanny Association
Jewish Peace Fellowship
Lutheran Peace Fellowship
National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund
Nepal Foundation
New Society Educational Foundation
New Society Publishers
Nonviolence.org
O'Reilly Media
Pax Christi USA
Pendle Hill Conference Center
Pennsylvania Ballet
Philadelphia Nanny Network
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
Raphael Webscapes, LLC
QuakerQuaker.org
Salem County Special Services School District
Skipping Stones Magazine
Slim Goodbody Productions
Steady Footsteps
Syracuse Cultural Workers
Training for Change
United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO
Urban Land Institute / Philadelphia
Veterans for Peace
War Resisters League
William Penn Charter School
World Game Institute
Young Friends North America

Web Designer, Content Editor, SEO Specialist

See also: Print Resume, LinkedIn profile.

SKILLS

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Consulting: Fifteen years of experience in nonprofit world. Much of this work consists of educating staff and leadership on effective use of online communication technologies. Current focus is on analytics, integrating social media, and helping nonprofits adopt content management systems.

Web Development: Proficiency in HTML, XHTML, PHP, CSS, PERL (CGI), MYSQL, Adobe Dreamweaver, Six Apart's Movable Type, Drupal, WordPress, t and related content management systems, along with Search Engine Optimization techniques and analytic tracking methods. Experience with various shopping cart backends for E-Commerce applications. Comfortable with Quark Xpress, Adobe Pagemaker, Adobe Photoshop, Joomla, and Javascript. Close follower of Web 2.0 developments.

Editing: Experience as Acquiring Editor for nonprofit publishing house; proficient at negotiations, copy editing, marketing.

Martin has given workshops and panel presentations on tech issues and on renewal movements in the Religious Society of Friends.

Biographies

TECH:
Martin Kelley is a Philadelphia area web designer who has been building online communities since 1995. An early adopter of user-created media, he was blogging in 1997 and picks up every social media service. In 2008 O'Reilly Media published "Web 2.0 Mashups and Niche Aggregators," his first published tech publication. A professional web developer and consultant, he builds sites and writes about tech issues on MartinKelley.com.

QUAKER:
Martin Kelley is a South Jersey Friend with a love out of outreach and ministry and a passion for looking afresh at Friends' testimonies, language and practices. Before becoming an independent web developer, Martin Kelley worked for Friends General Conference and Friends Journal. He is the publisher of QuakerQuaker.org, a community site for the Convergent Friends movement. He thinks the Quaker message is more relevant than ever but worries we're not being bold enough to gather George Fox's and Isaiah's "great people."

Upcoming Speaking Engagements:

Co-leader, "Convergent Friends and the New Monastics." Pendle Hill Conference Center, Wallingford, PA. Scheduled May 2010.

Past Workshops and Presentations

Speaker, "An Introduction to Convergent Friends." Salem Quarter Meeting. Greenwich, NJ. September 13, 2009.

Facilitator, "Friends Testimonies, What Canst Thou Say?" Two-part session. Young Friends Summer Gathering (Philadelphia Yearly Meeting). Camp Onas, Ottsville, PA. August 25, 2009.

Co-leader, "Reclaiming the Power of Primitive Quakerism." Weekend workshop. Ben Lomond Friends Center. Ben Lomond, California. February 2009.

Presenter, "Friends Schools and Web 2.0" (video). Panel discussion for Friends Council on Education. At Germantown Friends School, Philadelphia, PA. January 2009.

Presenter, Religion and Technology Teachers Peer Network (Friends Council on Education). December 2007. Center City Philadelphia, PA. Also available as Google Slideshow Presentation

Teacher, "Quakerism 101". four-session course for Moorestown Friends Meeting. Moorestown NJ. October -November 8, 2006.

Co-faciliator, On Fire: Renewing Quakerism Through a Covergence of Friends. Interest group, FGC Gathering. July 2006.

Invited Guest, Quakerism classes, William Penn Charter School. East Falls, Philadelphia PA. April 2006.

Leader, Food for Fire weekend workshop, New York Yearly Meeting's Powell House. Old Chatham, NY. February 2006.

Co-leader, Strangers to the Covenant (five sessions), workshop for high-school Friends, FGC Gathering. July 2005.

Teacher, Quakerism 101 (six sessions), Medford Friends Meeting. Medford, NJ. September-November, 2004.

Teacher, "Living in the Light" Quakerism 101 course (one session), Central Philadelphia Friends Meeting. Center City Philadelphia, PA. March 2003.

Contact

Email: martink@martinkelley.com
Phone: (609) 365-0123

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I was referred to a website the other day that barely exists, at least in the way that I see sites. It's homepage was built entirely in Flash, was completely invisible to search engines and barely functioned in Firefox. Domaintools.com gave it an SEO score of zero (out of a scale of one hundred). It's Google PageRank was three out of ten, making it less visible that my kid pages. But this was a website for a high-flying web development house, a company that works with some of Philadelphia's most prominent and well-endowed cultural institutions. Their client work isn't quite as invisible, but their website for Philadelphia's relative-new $265 million performance arts center has a PageRank equivalent to my personal blog--youch!

I think there's a lesson here. Prominent cultural institutions don't look at Google (and SEO-friendly developers) because they're big enough and well-known enough that they assume people will find them anyway. They're right, of course, but how many more people would find them if they had well-built websites? And what's the long-term vision if they're relying on their established reputation to do their web marketing?

It's perhaps impossible for a net-centric start-up to replicate a hugely-endowed cultural icon like an orchestra or ballet, giving some degree of insulation to these institutions from direct internet competition. But if these nonprofits saw themselves in the entertainment business, competing for the limited attention and money of an audience that has many evening-time possibilities, then you'd think they'd want to leverage the internet as much as they could: to use the web to reach out not only to their existing audience but to nurture and develop future audiences.

Are the audiences of high brow institutions so full of hip young audiences that they can steer clear of web-centric marketing?