I moved, again, back to Capitol Hill in Seattle

<p>I recently move from Fremont back to Capitol Hill in Seattle, to a nice old house (over 100 years!) which is a nice change from living in a relatively new townhouse. There's more character. If you need my address, then you probably know how to get in touch with me, so do that, and I'll send it to you.</p> <p>I'm excited to be back on the hill, close to many friends, the farmers market, and many cafe's and restaurants. I also look forward to re-engaging with <a href="http://sustainablecapitolhill.org">Sustainable Capitol Hill</a>.</p> <p>If you are in Seattle, we will be participating in the <a href="http://capitolhillgaragesale.com">Capitol Hill Garage Sale</a> on June 13th. So drop by and buy a book or get something we're giving away free because we don't want it anymore. There will be lots of good...

I'm Attending Inbound Marketing University in June

<p>One of the things I do for <a href="http://civicactions.com">CivicActions</a> is run the marketing group. Aside from marketing CivicActionn via our blog, twitter, conference attendance, and other events, I also help our clients with social media strategy, listending campaigns and content strategy. I'm also an <a href="http://seomoz.com">SEOMoz Pro</a> member, and just heard about the Inbound Marketing University program they are involved in. I signed up. and in about 3 weeks I'll be attending this free, online, 10 session training.<br /> <a href="http://www.inboundmarketing.com/university"><img src="http://inboundmarketing.com/sites/default/files/imu_atnd125x125.gif" height="125" width="125" border="0" alt="Attending IMU"...

CivicActions Recommended Directory Structure For Drupal Hosting

At the Seattle Drupal User Group meeting tonight I gave a short presentation on the directory structure that we like to use at CivicActions. Some people asked if I would post my slide deck explaining the directory structure, so here it is. I may come back and flesh out this post explaining the structure more, but wanted to get the slide deck up for those who were listening on U-Stream or following on twitter, or actually in the room. As I joked at the end: I make no warranties expressed or implied, no joke. CivicActions Drupal Directory Structure View more presentations from...

Smashing Magazine on Web Design Best Practices for Non Profits: Amnesty.org Cited!

Smashing Magazine posted a really great “best practices” piece about web design for non profits. They then provided 20 examples of great non profit websites, among them, two CivicActions clients, Amnesty International, of which they said: The Amnesty International site makes great use of color, including a bright yellow header and accents mixed with shades of gray and black. A slideshow on the home page shows current news and research. Links to join, donate, or take other action are featured prominently in the sidebar and a link to media information is included in the header. The home page also includes plenty of current news and resources below the main content up top. And Witness.org, for whom we built the Video Hub. We are very proud of our work for these two worldchanging clients, and happy that they are being recognized not only for their great work, but for their websites as exemplars for the non profit sector. If you work for a non profit organization, or build webistes for one, you should definitely read the Smashing Magazine article for all the details. As a teaser, their tips include: Make Your Site Donor-Friendly Make Your Site Media-Friendly Make Your Site Volunteer-Friendly Make Sure Your Organization’s Purpose is Immediately Apparent Make Sure Your Content Takes Center Stage Make Sure Your Website is Consistent with Your Other Promotional Materials Know Your Site’s Purpose Up Front Include a News Section or...

Information and Presentation Design: Gleanings From a Course With Edward Tufte

I recently had the opportunity to take Edward Tufte’s one day course, Presenting Data and Information. Tufte is the master of the subject, and everything I’ve heard about his course was positive, I can now concur and recommend that anyone interested in data visualization and usability should take this course of you have the chance, it’s really quite affordable and you get a set of his books with registration. The course really focused on two related topics: Presentation of information and data and evaluating visually presented information and data. Crafting powerful presentations (live presentations). Throughout the course Tufte uses examples from the four books you get with registration (The Visual Display of Information, Envisioning Information, Visual Explanations, Beautiful Evidence) as well as anecdotes and some supplemental examples. The books are superbly – and intelligently (natch) – designed. Using examples ranging from Albrecht Durer’s engraving of Saint Jerome in His Cell to a data-map charting Napoleon’s losses during the French invasion of Russia in 1812 to the iPhone interface and his own sculptural explorations, Tufte kept an audience of artists, designers, web geeks and Wall Streeters engaged for 6 hours. He even showed off two books that were about 500 years old: a first printing (1613) of Galileo’s treatise on sunspots in which he states in print that the Earth revolves around the sun, and a book on math and geometry from around 1570. Designing and Preparing for Presentations It seems that presentations are all the rage recently. Ignite events (20 slides, 15 seconds each slide, 5 minutes total, a modified Pecha Kucha presentation event – 20 slides, 20 seconds...