Quaker 2.0

If you’ve been here before, you’ll notice that Quaker 2.0 (or Q2, as I call it) has undergone a major redesign. Hopefully you’ll also notice that the site has moved away from being my soapbox (I get way too obnoxious when I’m on my soapbox) and has reemerged as a group discussion about where the Quaker church is heading in the twenty-first century and how we can be a part of shaping that direction. Maybe that what I was hoping for when I started the blog, but in the end I had a lot to learn.

When Wess Daniels and I first started e-mailing each other, we talked mostly about blogging and how amazing a collaborative tool it can be. But what impressed me most about our conversations was that we saw the potential for the Quaker blogsphere to become more than the sum of it’s parts through a focused collaboration. When I suggested that we get more writers for Q2, Wess jumped, and thus began the flurry of e-mails and IMs planning, designing, and inviting.

When I began to build out wireframes for Q2, I started with the premise that each author would need to have some sort of identity so that people could get a feel for both their writing style and their point of view. We wanted to give each author a virtual homepage so that someone interested in that author’s posts could follow them a little easier. We also wanted the home page to reflect the multi-author nature of the blog, so we separated “articles” from “blog posts” - making it clearer that not only are we writing about the idea of Convergent Friends, but each writer also has their own way of thinking about the topics posed. In the end, we spent hours - which turned into months - looking for the right WordPress template tags and widgets to build a community site that celebrates it’s authors. I think we’ve done that.
I’m excited about the potential of Quaker 2.0, and I know Wess is too. We’d love to know what you think, so leave us a note. We’re also looking for more writers, so if you’re interested in being part of the crew, let us know.