Service Projects Portfolio
Below are some of the past and ongoing service projects that I’m working on. These are projects that I’ve done free of charge or significantly underwritten the cost.
Tiny House Iowa City
Site Design / Website Hosting / Social Media (Aug 2014 – Present)
Perhaps you’ve heard of the small house movement. These are tiny houses on trailers build with traditional residential materials. The movement was founded in Iowa City, but has become a global movement. When I learned about the tiny home of Doug Williams, and the group he was forming, I decided to contact Doug about creating a website and social media presence for his group. They now have hundreds of followers. The domain name registration, hosting, site design, and ongoing maintenance have been free of charge.
Dances of Universal Peace
Site Design / Website Hosting / Social Media (Dec 2011 – Present)
I became aware of a small dance group in our community that was without a web presence (Dances of Universal Peace). In December of 2011, I reached out to the primary contact person and offered to create a website and Facebook page for their group. I covered all the cost of setting up and hosting their website, and volunteered my time to design it. Today, I continue hosting the site, and maintaining it for the group free of charge.
What’s unique about this project is that the group owner had little interest in getting sucked into the mind boggling and time consuming details of social media and web design. So, I designed the site entirely on my own, and for the content of the site, I was able to use the newsletters and updates currently being sent out by email. These are what continue to keep the site updated with the latest news. So, essentially, it’s a site that is, as easy to run as sending out an email. Those posts get re-posted to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and other social media.
This was one of my early works toward creating a turn-key, no-cost, zero effort web presence. While most of my work is paid, this was a service project that I wanted to do without charge.
Path of Hope
Site Design / Support (Sep 2015 – Present)
I was contacted by Path of Hope director Mike Mbanza about helping with a redesign of their website. I was inspired as I learned more about Mike’s work through Path of Hope, and I wanted to provide the organization with an exceptional website. I charged for only a few hours of my time with the rest of the work and materials being donated.
