Tag Archives ⇒ need

Essential Mac Apps 2017

November 1, 2017
· Martin Kelley

Oh dear: a few weeks ago Wess Daniels start­ed a Twit­ter dis­cus­sion about the new Mac app Card­hop. In the thread he asked me about oth­er apps which apps I find essen­tial. I thought I’d type up some­thing in ten min­utes but then the draft post kept grow­ing. I’m sure I still missed some. I guess I didn’t real­ize how par­tic­u­lar I am about my com­put­ing environment. 🙂

Bartender

Okay, maybe it’s a bit OCD but I hate clut­tered Mac menubars run­ning along the top of my screen. This app was just rebuilt for High Sier­ra and is an essen­tial tool. I have most every­thing hid­den and have set up a key­board short­cut (the little-used right “option” key) to tog­gle the full menubar icon set.

Fantastical

This is my favorite cal­en­dar app. It sits in the menubar, ready to give a beau­ti­ful agen­da view with just a sin­gle tap. It can open up to a full view. Man­age cal­en­dars is easy and the nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing is suburb.

Cardhop

Just released, this is Fantastical’s newest cousin, an app for man­ag­ing con­tacts from Flex­ibits. It works with what­ev­er you have set up for con­tacts on your Mac (I use Google but iCloud is fine too). Giv­en Flexibit’s track record, and Cardhop’s resem­blance to the dis­con­tin­ued Cobook, this is like­ly to be a win­ner for me.

Favioconographer

I’ve been a Chrome user since the week it debuted but late­ly I’ve been try­ing to switch to Safari, want­i­ng its supe­ri­or bat­tery man­age­ment and sync­ing of book­marks and tabs with iOS. Many of Safari’s annoy­ances have lessoned as Apple itin­er­at­ed with each release. There are enough exten­sions now that I can get by. I am, though, one of those weird peo­ple whom John Gru­ber iden­ti­fied: wannabee Safari users who real­ly like Fav­i­cons in tabs. For­tu­nate­ly, Fav­i­cono­g­ra­ph­er has come along. There are occa­sion­al odd­i­ties (float­ing icons, icons that don’t match site) but over­all it improves the Safari expe­ri­ence enough to make it a win over Chrome.

1Blocker for Mac

Uses the built-in con­tent fil­ter­ing sys­tem built into Mac Safari. Good sync­ing with the iOS app. “Con­tent fil­ter­ing” (aka block­ing) has become an impor­tant secu­ri­ty con­cern and let’s face it: the web runs so much bet­ter with­out all the crap that some sites throw in along with their con­tent. You can whitelist sites that respect read­ers. Hon­or­able men­tion in Chrome or as an alter­na­tive for Safari is uBlock Ori­gin, a great block­er (and dis­tinct from stan­dard uBlock, which I don’t recommend).

Karabiner-Elements

Lets you remap the gen­er­al­ly use­less Caps Lock key. I have it mapped Brett-Terpstra style so that a sin­gle click opens Spot­light search and a hold and click acts as a hyper key (imag­ine a shift key that you can use for any keystroke).

BetterTouchTool

Remap keys and key com­bi­na­tions. With Kara­bin­er, I can use it to have Capslock‑C open a par­tic­u­lar app, for instance.

Tunnelbear

I used to think VPNs were a lux­u­ry but with peo­ple hack­ing in on pub­lic Wi-Fi accounts and the loss of pri­va­cy, I’ve signed up for this easy-to-use VPN ser­vice. One account can pow­er mul­ti­ple devices so my lap­top and phone are secured.

Evernote

It’s been around for years. I cur­rent­ly have 13,000 notes stored in Ever­note, includ­ing every issue of the mag­a­zine I work for going back to the mid-1950s. There was a time a few years ago when I was wor­ried for Ever­note, as it kept chas­ing quirky side projects as its main app got bug­gi­er and bug­gi­er. But they’ve had a shake-up, ditched the dis­trac­tions and have built the ser­vice back up. Most of my projects are orga­nized with Evernote.

Ulysses

There are a gazil­lion writ­ing apps out there that com­bine Mark­down writ­ing syn­tax with min­i­mal­ist inter­faces (Bear, IaWriter, Byword) but Ulysses has edged its way to being my favorite, with quick sync­ing and abil­i­ty to post direct­ly to WordPress.

Todoist

There are also a gazil­lion task man­agers. Todoist does a good job of keep­ing projects that need due dates in order.

1Password

You should be using a pass­word man­ag­er. Repeat: you should be using a pass­word man­ag­er. 1Password is rock sol­id. They’ve recent­ly changed their eco­nom­ic mod­el and strong­ly favor sub­scrip­tion accounts. While I’ve tried to lim­it just how many auto-pulling sub­scrip­tions I have, I under­stand the ratio­nale and have switched.

Airmail

A great email app for Mac and iOS that can dis­play and sort your Gmail accounts (and oth­ers too). Almost too many options if you’re the kind to fid­dle with that sort of thing but easy to get start­ed and great with just the defaults.

 

Google and Apple and clouds

The Big‑G should get a shoutout: it pow­ers the data­bas­es for my email, cal­en­dar, con­tacts, and pho­tos. All my hard­ware has migrat­ed over to Apple, helped in large part by the open­ing up of its ecosys­tem to third-party apps.

What’s also use­ful to note is that all of the data-storing ser­vices are cloud based. If my phone or lap­top dis­ap­peared, I could bor­row a new one and be up to speed almost imme­di­ate­ly. Since many of these apps run on data­bas­es run by Google, I can also switch apps or even have mul­ti­ple apps access­ing the same infor­ma­tion for dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es. There’s a real free­dom to the app ecosys­tem these days.

Interviewing the next head of AFSC

April 3, 2017
· Martin Kelley

This week’s Friends Jour­nal fea­ture is my inter­view with Joyce Ajlouny, who is leav­ing her role as head of the Ramal­lah Friends School to become the next gen­er­al sec­re­tary for Amer­i­can Friends Ser­vice Committee.

I inter­viewed her by phone from my back porch on a snowy day and very much enjoyed con­ver­sa­tion. I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by the chal­lenges of an orga­ni­za­tion like AFSC — one that has to bal­ance strong roots in a reli­gious tra­di­tion while large­ly work­ing out­side of it. How do you bal­anc­ing the con­flict­ing iden­ti­ties? It’s not unlike the chal­lenge of a Friends school like Ramallah’s.

I was also par­tic­u­lar­ly moved by the gen­uine enthu­si­asm in her voice as she talked about engag­ing in hon­est con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple with whom we have strong dis­agree­ments. In this polar­ized age, it’s tempt­ing to try to stay in the safe­ty our bub­bles. Joyce seems to thrive step­ping out of that com­fort zone:

I think we’ve learned from this last U.S. elec­tion that we need to lis­ten more. This can often be a chal­lenge for peo­ple who are very pas­sion­ate about the posi­tions they take. Some­times the pas­sion is so over­whelm­ing that it sort of over­rides that will­ing­ness to lis­ten to oth­er nar­ra­tives. This is some­thing that we real­ly need to work much hard­er on. Truth is always incom­plete. We always have to look for oth­er truths. We need to break through some of these bound­aries that we’ve put around our­selves and seek a wider spec­trum of perspectives.

I think AFSC will be in good hands with Ajlouny.


An interview with Joyce Ajlouny - Friends Journal

An inter­view with Joyce Ajlouny — Friends Journal 

Meet AFSC’s incom­ing gen­er­al secretary.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

The Quaker Ecosystem

February 23, 2017
· Martin Kelley

An upcom­ing theme of Friends Jour­nal is one I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in. It’s called “Reimag­in­ing the Quak­er Ecosys­tem” and address­es count­less con­ver­sa­tions I think many of us have had over the years. Here’s the description:

Many of our tra­di­tion­al decision-making struc­tures are under tremen­dous stress these days. There are few nom­i­nat­ing com­mit­tees that don’t bemoan the dif­fi­cul­ties find­ing vol­un­teer lead­er­ship. In the face of this, a wave of ques­tion­ing and cre­ativ­i­ty is emerg­ing as Friends rein­vent and regen­er­ate Quak­er struc­tures. Pre­vi­ous­ly unasked ques­tions about pow­er and decision-making mod­els are on the agen­da again.

I think this begs the ques­tion of the whole why and how of our orga­niz­ing as a reli­gious soci­ety. One of the most read posts on my blog in 2003 was a based on a review of a book by Robert E. Web­ber called The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals. Web­ber was talk­ing about main­stream Evan­gel­i­cals, who he divid­ed into three gen­er­a­tional phases,

  • Tra­di­tion­al Evan­gel­i­cals 1950 – 1975
  • Prag­mat­ic Evan­gel­i­cals 1975 – 2000
  • Younger Evan­gel­i­cals 2000-

I was work­ing at Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence back in 2003 and Webber’s descrip­tions felt sur­pris­ing­ly famil­iar despite the very dif­fer­ent con­text of lib­er­al Quakerism.

Take for exam­ple youth min­istry: Web­ber says Prag­mat­ic Evan­gel­i­cals tend to pre­fer “out­reach pro­grams and week­end fun retreats,” which is what the even­tu­al FGC Youth Min­istries Pro­gram most­ly mor­phed into (before going into per­ma­nent hia­tus). Web­ber sug­gests that the Younger Evan­gel­i­cals cohort sought “prayer, Bible study, wor­ship, social action” and sure enough many pro­gres­sive spir­i­tu­al types in Philly left meet­ing­hous­es for the alter­na­tive Cir­cle of Hope church. Quak­erism lost a lot of momen­tum at that time (Bet­sy Blake see also: Bet­sy Blake’s account). It took the cre­ation of a whole new orga­ni­za­tion, Quak­er Vol­un­tary Ser­vice, to get a live­ly and sus­tain­able youth min­istries run­ning (you can read QVS’s Ross Hennesy’s jour­ney from the 2013 FJ to see Webber’s chart come to life).

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I think many Quak­er orgs are stuck in a rut try­ing every­thing they can to make the Prag­mat­ic Evan­gel­i­cal mod­el work. There’s a hope that just one more reor­ga­ni­za­tion will solve their sys­temic longterm prob­lems — new peo­ple will come into com­mit­tee ser­vice, meet­ing­hous­es will start fill­ing, etc. But the more we try to hold onto the old frame­work, the more cre­ative ener­gy dis­si­pates and Friends get lost or leave.

My per­son­al hunch is that struc­ture (almost) doesn’t mat­ter. What we need is a shift in atten­tion. How can we back up and ask the big ques­tions: Why are we here? What is our prophet­ic role and how do we encour­age and sup­port that in our mem­bers? How do we care for our church com­mu­ni­ty and still reach beyond the meet­ing­house walls to serve as heal­ers in the world?

A few years ago I dropped in on part of my year­ly meet­ing ses­sions. In one room, mostly-older mem­bers were revis­ing some arcane sub­sec­tion of Faith and Prac­tice while across the hall mostly-younger mem­bers were express­ing heart­break about a badly-decided pol­i­cy on trans youth. The dis­con­nect between the spir­it in the rooms was beyond obvious.

I think we need to be able to stop and give atten­tion to direct lead­ings of need­ed min­istry. I often return to the Good Samar­i­tan sto­ry. In my mind’s eye the Levite is the Friend who can’t stop because they’re late for a com­mit­tee meet­ing. If we could fig­ure out a way to get more Friends to piv­ot into Good Samar­i­tan mode, I sus­pect we’d find new life in our reli­gious soci­ety. Peren­ni­al ques­tions would transform.

Signs of new life are abun­dant but uneven­ly dis­trib­uted. How do you imag­ine the ecosys­tem in 10, 20, or 50 years? Sub­mis­sion due date 3/6 offi­cial­ly though we may have a chance to review lat­er pieces.


Write For Friends Journal - Submit Writing For Quaker Publication

Write For Friends Jour­nal — Sub­mit Writ­ing For Quak­er Publication 

Friends Jour­nal is an inde­pen­dent mag­a­zine serv­ing the entire Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends. We wel­come arti­cles, poet­ry, art,…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Mixing it up

January 20, 2017
· Martin Kelley

Back in Novem­ber I start­ed a blog post that ran out of umph and stayed in my drafts. At time time I was react­ing to the pro­gres­sive debates about safe­ty pins as a sym­bol but it seems we’re are in anoth­er round of self-questioning, this time around the Women’s March and oth­er ini­tia­tives. As I find myself fre­quent­ly say­ing, we need lots of dif­fer­ent kinds of peo­ple orga­niz­ing in lots of dif­fer­ent styles. So maybe this blog posts’s time has come again.

Maybe this is just anoth­er stages of grief but I’ve been notic­ing a num­ber of online dis­cus­sions in which pro­gres­sives are shut­ting down oth­er pro­gres­sives for not being pro­gres­sive enough. Every time I see a pos­i­tive post, I can pre­dict there’s going to be about three enthu­si­as­tic “yes!” com­ments, fol­lowed by a 500-word com­ment explain­ing why the idea isn’t rad­i­cal enough.

Folks, we’ve got big­ger prob­lems than try­ing to fig­ure out who’s the most woke per­son on our Face­book feed.

Suc­cess­ful social change move­ments are always a spec­trum of more or less politically-correct and rad­i­cal voic­es. It’s like a chord in music: strings vibrat­ing on dif­fer­ent fre­quen­cies sound bet­ter togeth­er. Some­times in pol­i­tics you need the crazy rad­i­cals to stir things up and some­times you need the too-cautious lib­er­als to legit­imize the protest message.

Some years ago I was part of an cam­paign in Philly that tar­get­ed what many of us felt was a pro­pa­gan­da push around Colum­bus Day. An attempt by all of the con­cerned activists to come togeth­er pre­dictably went nowhere. There were too many dif­fer­ences in style and tac­tics and lan­guage and cul­ture. But that break­down in coor­di­na­tion allowed each sub­cul­ture to pick a tac­tic that worked best for them.

The Quak­ers did their vis­i­ble agit­prop lead­ing and got detained. The anar­chists made cre­ative posters and set off sur­rep­ti­tious stink devices. Some anony­mous pranksters sent out fake press releas­es to dis­rupt media cov­er­age. The resul­tant news cov­er­age focused on the sheer diver­si­ty of the protests.

If protest had indeed come from a sin­gle group fol­low­ing a sin­gle tac­tic, the dis­sent would have been buried in the fourth para­graph of the cov­er­age. But the cre­ativ­i­ty made it the focus of the cov­er­age. Diver­si­ty of tac­tics works. Mis­takes will be made. Some pro­gres­sives will be clue­less – maybe even some of the ones con­sid­er­ing them­selves the most woke. It’s okay. We’ll learn as we go along. We might laugh at how we used to think wear­ing safe­ty pins was effec­tive – or we might won­der why we ever thought it was mean­ing­less sym­bol. What­ev­er hap­pens, let’s just encour­age wit­ness wher­ev­er and when­ev­er it’s hap­pen­ing. Let’s be gen­tler on each other.

QuakerQuaker on the move

September 10, 2016
· Martin Kelley

Cross­post­ing from Quak­erQuak­er:

Cardboard boxes in apartment, moving day

The biggest changes in half a decade are com­ing to Quak­erQuak­er. The Ning​.com ser­vice that pow­ers the main web­site is about to increase its month­ly charge by 140 per­cent. When I first picked Ning to host the three-year-old Quak­erQuak­er project in 2008, it seemed like a smart move. Ning had recent­ly been found­ed by tech world rock stars with access to stratospheric-level funds. But it nev­er quite got trac­tion and start­ed dial­ing back its ambi­tions in 2010. It was sold and sold again and a long-announced new ver­sion nev­er mate­ri­al­ized. I’ve been warn­ing peo­ple against start­ing new projects on it for years. Its lim­i­ta­tions have become clear­er with every pass­ing year. But it’s con­tin­ued to work and a healthy com­mu­ni­ty has kept the con­tent on Quak­erQuak­er inter­est­ing. But I don’t get enough dona­tions to cov­er a 140 per­cent increase, and even if I did it’s not worth it for a ser­vice stuck in 2010. It’s time to evolve!

There are many inter­est­ing things I could build with a mod­ern web plat­form. Ini­tial research and some feed­back from fel­low Quak­er techies has me inter­est­ed in Bud­dy­Press, an expand­ed and social ver­sion of the ubiq­ui­tous Word­Press blog­ging sys­tem. It has plu­g­ins avail­able that claim to move con­tent from exist­ing Ning sites to Bud­dy­Press, leav­ing the tan­ta­liz­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty that eight years of the online Quak­er con­ver­sa­tion can be main­tained (wow!).

I will need funds for the move. The sub­scrip­tions to do the import/export will incur costs and there will be plu­g­ins and themes to buy. I’m men­tal­ly bud­get­ing an open-ended num­ber of late Sat­ur­day nights. And the per­son­al com­put­er we have is get­ting old. The charge does­n’t hold and keys are start­ing to go. It will need replace­ment soon­er rather than later.

Any dona­tions Friends could make to the Pay­pal account would be very help­ful for the move. You can start by going to http://​bit​.ly/​q​u​a​k​e​r​g​ive. Oth­er options are avail­able on the dona­tion page at http://​www​.quak​erquak​er​.org/​p​a​g​e​/​s​u​p​p​ort. Thanks for what­ev­er you can spare. I’m as sur­prised as any­one that this lit­tle DIY project con­tin­ues to host some many inter­est­ing Quak­er con­ver­sa­tions eleven years on!

In Friend­ship,
Mar­tin Kel­ley for Quak​erQuak​er​.org

Bike to Work 2016

May 31, 2016
· Martin Kelley

May 20th was Bike To Work week, which I rode for the third time in recent years. This year I rode 32.1 miles, from 5:53 to 9:00 a.m., for a total time of 3:07 hours and speed of 10.3mph.

I had a phone with Google Maps direc­tions strapped to my han­dle­bar but did­n’t need it much as I’ve learned most of the route by now. Every time it feels less out­landish to do this ride, to the point where I might just spon­ta­neous­ly do it again this sum­mer if I find myself awake ear­ly. This year I got an ear­ly start, nev­er stopped for snacks, and only occa­sion­al­ly stopped for pic­tures, which togeth­er brought me in far ear­li­er than I’ve man­aged before.

Ready to leave, 5:53am, mile 0 of 32. 
Mile 10/32. This tenth of the ride is a most­ly for­got­ten 18 cen­tu­ry coun­try road. 
This is a very half-hearted bike lane. 
The longest part of my route is also one of my favorites: a rail­road avenue along the old Read­ing line going through cute old towns. 
Mile 22/32: the old­Had­don Heights train station. 
On the Ben Franklin bridge: almost there! 
Pass­ing by work a lit­tle before 9 a.m.
At work: time for a shower! 

The route (minus the blocks right around my house for privacy):

Expanding our concepts of pacifism

October 17, 2013
· Martin Kelley

My blog­ging pal Wess Daniels wrote a provoca­tive piece this week called When Peace Pre­serves Vio­lence. It’s a great read and blows some much-needed holes in the self-satisfaction so many of us car­ry with us. But I’d argue that there’s a part two need­ed that does a side-step back to the source…

Eric Moon wrote some­thing that’s stuck with me in his June/July Friends Jour­nal piece, “Cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly Not the Tes­ti­monies.” His arti­cle focus­es on the way we’ve so cod­i­fied the “Quak­er Tes­ti­monies” that they’ve become ossi­fied and tak­en for grant­ed. One dan­ger he sees in this is that we’ll not rec­og­nize clear lead­ings of con­science that don’t fit the modern-day mold.

Moon tells the anec­dote of a Friend who “guilti­ly lament[ed] that he could­n’t attend protest march­es because he was busy all day at a cen­ter for teens at risk for drop­ping out of school, a pro­gram he had estab­lished and invest­ed his own sav­ings in.” Here was a Friend doing real one-on-one work chang­ing lives but feel­ing guilty because he could­n’t par­tic­i­pate in the largely-symbolic act of stand­ing on a street corner.

I don’t think that we need to give up the peace tes­ti­mo­ny to acknowl­edge the entan­gle­ment of our lives and the hypocrisy that lies all-too-shallowly below the sur­face of most of our lifestyles. What we need to do is rethink its boundaries.

A mod­el for this is our much-quoted but much-ignored “Quak­er saint” John Wool­man. While a sense of the equal­i­ty of humans is there in his jour­nal as a source of his com­pas­sion, much of his argu­men­ta­tion against slav­ery is based in Friends by-then well-established tes­ti­mo­ny against war (yes, against war, not for peace). Slav­ery is indeed a state of war and it is on so many lev­els – from the indi­vid­u­als treat­ing each oth­er hor­ri­bly, to soci­etal norms con­struct­ed to make this seem nor­mal, to the economies of nation states built on the trade.

Wool­man’s con­cep­tu­al leap was to say that the peace tes­ti­mo­ny applied to slav­ery. If we as Friends don’t par­tic­i­pate in war, then we sim­i­lar­ly can’t par­tic­i­pate in the slave trade or enjoy the ill-gotten fruits of that trade – the war prof­it of cot­tons, dyes, rum, etc.

Today, what else is war? I think we have it hard­er than Wool­man. In the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry a high per­cent­age of one’s con­sum­ables came from a tight geo­graph­ic radius. You were like­ly to know the labor that pro­duced it. Now almost noth­ing comes local­ly. If it’s cheap­er to grow gar­lic in Chi­na and ship it halfway around the world than it is to pay local farm­ers, then our local gro­cer will sell Chi­nese gar­lic (mine does). Books and mag­a­zines are sup­plant­ed by elec­tron­ics built in locked-down Far East­ern sweatshops.

But I think we can find ways to dis­en­gage. It’s a never-ending process but we can take steps and sup­port oth­ers tak­ing steps. We’ve got­ten it stuck in our imag­i­na­tion that war is a protest sign out­side Dunkin Donuts. What about those tutor­ing pro­grams? What about reduc­ing our cloth­ing con­sump­tions and find­ing ways to reduce nat­ur­al resource con­sump­tion (best done by lim­it­ing our­selves to lifestyles that cause us to need less resources).

And Yoder? Wess is dis­heart­ened by the sex­u­al mis­con­duct of Men­non­ite paci­fist John Howard Yoder (short sto­ry: he reg­u­lar­ly groped and sex­u­al­ly pres­sured women). But what of him? Of course he’s a fail­ure. In a way, that’s the point, even the plan: human heroes will fail us. Cocks will crow and will we stay silent (why the denom­i­na­tion kept it hush-hush for 15 years after his death is anoth­er whole WTF, of course). But why do I call it the plan? Because we need to be taught to rely first and sec­ond and always on the Spir­it of Jesus. George Fox fig­ured that out:

And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had noth­ing out­ward­ly to help me, nor could I tell what to do; then, oh! then I heard a voice which said, ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy con­di­tion’: and when I heard it, my heart did leap for joy. …and this I knew exper­i­men­tal­ly. My desires after the Lord grew stronger, and zeal in the pure knowl­edge of God, and of Christ alone, with­out the help of any man, book, or writing.

If young Fox had found a human hero that actu­al­ly walked the talk, he might have short-circuited the search for Jesus. He need­ed to expe­ri­ence the dis­heart­ened fail­ure of human knowl­edge to be low enough to be ready for his great spir­i­tu­al opening.

We all use iden­ti­ty to prop our­selves up and iso­late our­selves from cri­tique. I think that’s just part of the human con­di­tion. The path toward the divine is not one of retrench­ment or dis­avow­al, but rather focus on that one who might even now be prepar­ing us for new light on the con­di­tions of the human con­di­tion and church universal.

Outreach gets people to your meetinghouse / Hospitality keeps people returning.

March 23, 2013
· Martin Kelley

Over on Twit­ter feed came a tweet (h/t revrevwine):

seo - Google SearchTo trans­late, SEO is “search engine opti­miza­tion,” the often-huckersterish art of trick­ing Google to dis­play your web­site high­er than your com­peti­tors in search results. “Usabil­i­ty” is the catch-all term for mak­ing your web­site easy to nav­i­gate and invit­ing to vis­i­tors. Com­pa­nies with deep pock­ets often want to spend a lot of mon­ey on SEO, when most of the time the most viable long-term solu­tion to rank­ing high with search engines is to pro­vide vis­i­tors with good rea­sons to vis­it your site. What if we applied these prin­ci­ples to our church­es and meet­ing­hous­es and swapped the terms?

Out­reach gets peo­ple to your meetinghouse /
Hos­pi­tal­i­ty keeps peo­ple returning.

A lot of Quak­er meet­ing­hous­es have pret­ty good “nat­ur­al SEO.” Here in the U.S. East Coast, they’re often near a major road in the mid­dle of town. If they’re lucky there are a few his­tor­i­cal mark­ers of notable Quak­ers and if they are real­ly lucky there’s a highly-respected Friends school near­by. All these meet­ings real­ly have to do is put a nice sign out front and table a few town events every year. The rest is cov­ered. Although we do get the occa­sion­al “aren’t you all Amish?” com­ments, we have a much wider rep­u­ta­tion that our num­bers would nec­es­sar­i­ly war­rant. We rank pret­ty high.

But what are the lessons of hos­pi­tal­i­ty we could work on? Do we pro­vide places where spir­i­tu­al seek­ers can both grow per­son­al­ly and engage in the impor­tant ques­tions of the faith in the mod­ern world? Are we invi­ta­tion­al, bring­ing peo­ple into our homes and into our lives for shared meals and conversations?

In my free­lance days when I was hired to work on SEO I ran through a series of sta­tis­ti­cal reports and redesigned some under­per­form­ing pages, but then turned my atten­tion to the clien­t’s con­tent. It was in this realm that my great­est quan­tifi­able suc­cess­es occurred. At the heart of the con­tent work was ask­ing how could the site could more ful­ly engage with first-time vis­i­tors. The “usabil­i­ty con­sid­er­a­tions” on the Wikipedia page on usabil­i­ty could be eas­i­ly adapt­ed as queries:

Who are the users, what do they know, what can they learn? What do users want or need to do? What is the users’ gen­er­al back­ground? What is the users’ con­text for work­ing? What must be left to the machine? Can users eas­i­ly accom­plish intend­ed tasks at their desired speed? How much train­ing do users need? What doc­u­men­ta­tion or oth­er sup­port­ing mate­ri­als are avail­able to help the user?

I’d love to see Friends con­sid­er this more. FGC’s “New Meet­ings Tool­box” has a sec­tion on wel­com­ing new­com­ers. But I’d love to hear more sto­ries about how we’re work­ing on the “usabil­i­ty” of our spir­i­tu­al communities.