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Desert temptations

July 31, 2013
· Martin Kelley


Yes­ter­day I was home with the kids on comp time and got to par­tic­i­pate in their reli­gion ses­sion (my wife keeps them to a sched­ule in the sum­mers and reli­gion makes for a qui­et half hour midday). 

My 9 year old was read­ing the pas­sage of Jesus’s temp­ta­tion in the desert found in Matthew 4. I find it such a relat­able sto­ry. No, no one with pointy ears and a red tail has offered me a king­dom late­ly, but there are a num­ber of nor­mal human ele­ments nonetheless. 

To start with, Jesus is fast­ing and liv­ing with­out shel­ter for forty days. I know I become less of the per­son I want to be when I’m hun­gry, tired, and stressed. The tempter also prof­fers a test to see if God cares. That too is famil­iar: how often do we want some­thing from close fam­i­ly and friends but hold back to see if it’s offered. “Oh, if they real­ly cared I wouldn’t have to remind them.” We do this with God too, con­fus­ing chang­ing states of for­tune with divine favor rather than wel­com­ing even hard times as a oppor­tu­ni­ty for growth and understanding. 

One of my favorite parts of the Lord’s Prayer is the plea that we not even be led to temp­ta­tion. There’s a cer­tain humil­i­ty to that. Jesus might be able to resist the sweet promis­es of the tempter even when cold and hun­gry, but I’d rather skip the tests. 

It’s hard enough liv­ing in this world in a state of humil­i­ty and coop­er­a­tion. None of us are per­fect, start­ing with me, and we all cer­tain­ly have plen­ty of room to grow. But it’s nice to know that we don’t have to face the tempter alone. God knows just how hard it can be and has our back. 

Visual storytelling through animated gifs and Vine

June 27, 2013
· Martin Kelley

NPR’s Plan­et Mon­ey recent­ly ran an arti­cle on glass recy­cling, How A Used Bot­tle Becomes A New Bot­tle, In 6 Gifs. The Gif part is what intrigued me. A “gif” is a tightly-compressed image for­mat file that web design­ers leaned on a lot back in the days of low band­width. It’s espe­cial­ly good for designs with a few dis­creet col­ors, such as cor­po­rate logos or sim­ple car­toons. It also sup­ports a kind of prim­i­tive ani­ma­tion that was com­plete­ly overused in the late 90s to give web­pages fly­ing uni­corns and spin­ning globes.

Ani­mat­ed gifs have grown up. They make up half the posts on Tum­blr. They are often derived from fun­ny scenes in movies and come with humor­ous cap­tions. The Plan­et Mon­ey piece uses them for sto­ry­telling: text is illus­trat­ed by six gifs show­ing dif­fer­ent parts of the recy­cling process. The move­ment helps tell the sto­ry – indeed most of the shots would be visu­al­ly unin­ter­est­ing if they were static.

The short loops reminds me of Vine, the six-second video ser­vice from Twit­ter which I’ve used a lot for sil­ly kid antics. They can also tell a sim­ple sto­ry (they’re par­tic­u­lar­ly well suit­ed to repet­i­tive kid antics: up the steps, down the slide, up the steps, down the slide, up…).

In my work with Friends Jour­nal I’ve done some 7 – 12 minute video inter­views with off-site authors using Google Hang­outs, which essen­tial­ly just records the video con­ver­sa­tion. It’s fine for what we use it for, but the qual­i­ty depends a lot on the equip­ment on the oth­er end. If the band­width is low or the web­cam poor qual­i­ty, it will show, and there are few options for post-production edit­ing. But hon­est­ly, this is why I use Hang­outs: a short web-only inter­view won’t turn into a week­long project.

Pro­duc­ing high-quality video requires con­trol­ling all of the equip­ment, shoot­ing ten times more footage than you think you’ll need, and then hours of work con­dens­ing and edit­ing it down to a sto­ry. And after all this it’s pos­si­ble you’ll end up with some­thing that does­n’t get many views. Few Youtube users actu­al­ly watch videos all the way through to the end, drift­ing away to oth­er inter­net dis­trac­tions in the first few minutes.

I like the com­bi­na­tion of the sim­ple short video clips (whether Vine or ani­mat­ed gif) wed­ded to words. My last post here was the very light-weight sto­ry about a sum­mer after­noon project. Yes­ter­day, I tried again, shoot­ing a short ani­mat­ed gif of Tibetan monks vis­it­ing a local meet­ing­house. I don’t think it real­ly worked. They’re con­struct­ing a sand man­dala grain-by-grain. The small move­ments of their fun­nel sticks as sand drops is so small that a reg­u­lar sta­t­ic pho­to would suf­fice. But I’ll keep exper­i­ment­ing with the form.

A modern-day Commonplace Book?

May 14, 2013
· Martin Kelley

From a post by Jamie Todd Rubin, “Going Paper­less: How Penul­ti­mate and Ever­note Have Replaced My Pock­et Note­book,” I’ve learned the con­cept of the “Com­mon­place Book,” which he attrib­ut­es it to Jefferson:

The notion for the “com­mon­place book” comes from Thomas Jef­fer­son, who used just such a book to cap­ture pret­ty much any­thing: pas­sages from books he was read­ing, notes, sketch­es, you name it.

Wikipedia takes it fur­ther back in its entry on Com­mon­place books. The name comes from the latin locus com­mu­nis and the form got its start in a new form of fifteen-century bound journal:

Such books were essen­tial­ly scrap­books filled with items of every kind: med­ical recipes, quotes, let­ters, poems, tables of weights and mea­sures, proverbs, prayers, legal for­mu­las. Com­mon­places were used by read­ers, writ­ers, stu­dents, and schol­ars as an aid for remem­ber­ing use­ful con­cepts or facts they had learned. Each com­mon­place book was unique to its cre­ator’s par­tic­u­lar interests.

I real­ly like this idea. I’ve been think­ing a lot about work­flows recent­ly (and lis­ten­ing to way too many geek pod­casts on my com­mute). I’ve been mud­dling my way toward some­thing like this. I’m cur­rent­ly using Ever­note to log a lot of my life but there’s scraps of inter­est­ing tid­bits that have no home. An exam­ple from half an hour ago: I was lis­ten­ing to Pan­do­ra the train when along came an unfa­mil­iar song I want­ed to remem­ber for lat­er. A Com­mon­place book would be a nat­ur­al place to record this infor­ma­tion (First Aid Kit’s Lion’s Roar if you must know, think Bon­nie Raitt steps out with Townes van Zandt for a secret assig­na­tion at a Stock­holm open mic night.)

Of course, being a twenty-first cen­tu­ry dig­i­tal native, my work­flow would be elec­tron­ic. What I imag­ine is a sin­gle Ever­note page that holds a mon­th’s worth of the bits that come along. I have some­thing sim­i­lar with a log, a sin­gle file with one line entries (lots of Ifttt automa­tions like logged Foursquare check-ins, along with notes-to-self of mile­stones like issues sent to press, etc.). I’ll start set­ting this up.

Something afoot circa 2004

January 9, 2013
· Martin Kelley

Came across an 2004-era page of mine (the Baby Theo home­page) via an Archive​.org search today. Here was a descrip­tion on the sidebar:

This web­site is part of a infor­mal emerg­ing net­work of Friends that are reach­ing across our insti­tu­tion­al bound­aries to engage with our faith and with each oth­er. The “min­istry of the writ­ten word” has often sparked gen­er­a­tional renew­al among Friends and there’s some­thing afoot in all these com­ments and linkbacks. There are lots of poten­tial projects that can be launched over the new few years (books, work­shops, con­fer­ences, etc) so if you like the direc­tion of this site and the ques­tions it’s ask­ing, please con­sid­er a dona­tion to the non​vi​o​lence​.org site.

Were Friends part of Obama’s Evolution?

May 10, 2012
· Martin Kelley

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s been attribut­ing some of his so-called “evo­lu­tion” on same-sex mar­riage to his daugh­ters. As he told ABC’s Robin Roberts:

You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose par­ents are same-sex cou­ples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sit­ting around the din­ner table, and we’re talk­ing about their friends and their par­ents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that some­how their friends’ par­ents would be treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. It doesn’t make sense to them and, frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.

So where do Oba­ma’s daugh­ter’s inde­pen­dent friends come from? Like most tweens the like­li­est answer is school – in their case, Sid­well Friends. It’s not unlike­ly that the “evo­lu­tion” owed some­thing to the Quak­er envi­ron­ment there.

Most elite Quak­er schools have only a token base of Quak­er stu­dents and teach­ers, so we can’t assume that Malia and Sasha’s friends are Friends. Like many outward-facing Quak­er insti­tu­tions, mod­ern Friends schools’ strongest claim to Quak­erism is the val­ues and dis­cern­ment tech­niques they share with the wider world. They con­scious­ly trans­mit a style and ped­a­gogy and cre­ate an envi­ron­ment of open­ness and diver­si­ty. Of course the Oba­ma kids are going to rub up against non-traditional mar­riages at a East Coast Quak­er school. And no one should be sur­prised if they bring a lit­tle of that back home when the school bus drops them off at 1600 Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue.

NYTimes: Oba­ma Girls Influ­ence the Pres­i­dent — Again
Pres­i­dent Oba­ma often uses his daugh­ters, Malia and Sasha, as object lessons in explain­ing his rea­son­ing behind impor­tant pol­i­cy positions.

Five Tips for Building a Self-Marketing Website

September 7, 2009
· Martin Kelley

A poten­tial client recent­ly came to me with an exist­ing site. It cer­tain­ly was slick: the home­page fea­tured a Flash ani­ma­tion of telegenic young pro­fes­sion­als culled from a stock pho­to ser­vice, psuedo-jazz tech­no music, and words sweep­ing in from all sides sell­ing you the com­pa­ny’s ser­vice. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the page had no use­ful con­tent, no call-to-action and no Google PageR­ank. It was an expen­sive design, but I did­n’t need to look at the track­ing stats to know no one came this page.

So you’re ready to ditch a non-performing site for one more dynam­ic, some­thing that will attract cus­tomers and inter­act with them. Here’s five tips for build­ing a self-marketing website!

One: Use­ful Con­tent for your Tar­get Audience
Give vis­i­tors a rea­son to come to the site. Text-rich, chang­ing con­tent is essen­tial. In prac­ti­cal­i­ty, this means installing a blog and writ­ing posts every few weeks. You’ll see mea­sures like “key­word rel­e­van­cy” increase instant­ly as excerpt­ed text shows up on the home­page. Add videos and pho­tos if your com­pa­ny or team has that exper­tise, but remem­ber: when it comes to search, text is king.

Two: Give away some­thing valu­able or useful
Many smart mar­ket­ing sites fea­ture some free give­away right on the home­page: a use­ful quiz, pro­fes­sion­al analy­sis, a PDF how-to guide­book. A builder I worked with went to the trou­ble of post­ing dozens of floor plans & pic­tures to their web­site and com­pil­ing them into a PDF book, which they gave away for free. The catch in all this? You have to give your con­tact infor­ma­tion to get it. Once the free mate­r­i­al has been com­piled, the site runs itself as a sales lead generator!

Three: Ask your­self the Three User Questions!
It’s amaz­ing how focused the mind gets when you actu­al­ly sit down to define goals. Just about every web­site can ben­e­fit from this three-step exercise:

  1. Who is the tar­get audience?
  2. What would draw them to the site? 
  3. What do we want to get from them?

Get a group togeth­er to through your web­site page by page these ques­tions. Brain­storm a list of changes you could make. You’ll want to end up with Defined Goals: what quan­tifi­able actions do you want vis­i­tors to take? It might well just be the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of a con­tact form.

Four: Test Test and Test Again
Many small busi­ness­es now get a lot of their cus­tomers from their web­sites. Your web­site is an essen­tial piece of your mar­ket­ing and pub­lic­i­ty and you need to be smart about it. Com­pile togeth­er your favorite site-improvement ideas and make up  alter­nate designs incor­po­rat­ing the changes. Then use a tool such as Google Web­site Opti­miz­er to put the alter­na­tives through their paces. Which one “con­verts” bet­ter, i.e., which design gets you high­er per­cent­ages in the Defined Goals you’ve set? Once you’ve fin­ished a test, move on to the next brain­storm­ing idea and imple­ment it. Always be testing!

An exten­sive series of tests of one site I worked on dou­bled it’s con­ver­sion rate: imag­ine your com­pa­ny dou­bling its inter­net sales? It is com­plete­ly worth spend­ing the time and effort to go through this process.

Five: Don’t Be Afraid to Get Pro­fes­sion­al Help
If you need to hire a pro­fes­sion­al to help you through this process you’ll almost cer­tain­ly get your mon­ey’s worth! A recent projects cost the cus­tomer $6000 but I was able to doc­u­ment sav­ings of $100,000 per year in his pub­lic­i­ty costs! See my piece “What to Look For in SEO Con­sul­tants” for my insider-advice to how to pick a hon­est and com­pe­tent pro­fes­sion­al web pub­lic­i­ty consultant.

Convergent Friends: Content not designed for our market?

April 24, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Hen­ry Jenk­ins (right) mix­es up the names but has good com­men­tary on the Susan Boyle phe­nom­e­non in How Sarah [Susan] Spread and What it Means. I’ve been quot­ing lines over on my Tum­blr blog but this is a good one for Quak­er read­ers because I think it says some­thing about the Con­ver­gent Friends culture:

When we talk about pop cos­mopoli­tanism, we are most often talking
about Amer­i­can teens doing cos­play or lis­ten­ing to K‑Pop albums, not
church ladies gath­er­ing to pray for the suc­cess of a British reality
tele­vi­sion con­tes­tant, but it is all part of the same process. We are
reach­ing across bor­ders in search of con­tent, zones which were used to
orga­nize the dis­tri­b­u­tion of con­tent in the Broad­cast era, but which
are much more flu­id in an age of par­tic­i­pa­to­ry cul­ture and social
networks.

We live in a world where con­tent can be accessed quick­ly from any
part of the world assum­ing it some­how reach­es our radar and where the
col­lec­tive intel­li­gence of the par­tic­i­pa­to­ry cul­ture can identify
con­tent and spread the word rapid­ly when need­ed. Susan Boyle in that
sense is a sign of big­ger things to come — con­tent which wasn’t
designed for our mar­ket, con­tent which was­n’t timed for such rapid
glob­al cir­cu­la­tion, gain­ing much greater vis­i­bil­i­ty than ever before
and net­works and pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies hav­ing trou­ble keep­ing up with
the rapid­ly esca­lat­ing demand.

Susan Boyle’s video was pro­duced for a U.K.-only show but social media has allowed us to share it across that bor­der. In the Con­ver­gent Friends move­ment, we’re dis­cov­er­ing “con­tent which was­n’t designed for our mar­ket” – Friends of all dif­fer­ent stripes hav­ing direct access to the work and thoughts of oth­er types of Friends, which we are able to sort through and spread almost imme­di­ate­ly. In this con­text, the “net­works and pro­duc­tions com­pa­nies” would be our year­ly meet­ings and larg­er Friends bodies.