For those of you that don’t know, for the past six months I’ve been working on getting back into doing web design and development/programming (which I did before law school) and get a portfolio together. I started this journey by working on my very own wedding website in the middle of last year. Then, I was introduced to a couple of non-profit organizations that needed new websites, which I agreed to work on for free as favors to friends. One of those organizations seems to have lost interest, but the other project is moving along, which should give me something to announce in another month or two. Around the same time, I also signed up to volunteer for The Taproot Foundation and through them ended up working on another website redesign project for Mujeres Latinas en Accion, a Chicago non-profit. That project just recently wrapped up (the new website should be launched by the end of January). Along the way I also managed to pick up another client, The South Side Housing Digest and launched their site last week. Keep an eye out for it, as we add more features and expand some of the sections, especially if you’re thinking about living in Chicago.

These six months have culminated with me finally launching my own company website, Cobwebs Consulting LLC. I decided that the three things I want to work on are web design, technology consulting, and technology project management. Web design is pretty self-explanatory, I’ve always enjoyed well-designed sites and want to bring as many more into existence as I can. I’m not just talking about sites that look pretty though, I’m talking about sites that people actually enjoy (or at least don’t hate) using and that help accomplish some purpose for the owners. Those two things should never be in conflict. My interest in technology consulting arose because it seems like a lot of business really have no idea what they should be doing on the internet. They wonder if they need a facebook page, a twitter page, or an iphone app. They don’t know how to put their inventory online and take orders, or whether to build an intranet, or how make sure that their employees all have access to the information they need to do their jobs efficiently. I’d like to be the person that helps them figure out these issues. Project management seems to me like the next logical step after giving the consulting advice. The organization may have a plan of what they want to do, but they’re good at running the organization, not necessarily in choosing the right vendors and make sure the vendors are doing the job to the proper specifications. I can be the person that watches over the project to make sure it progresses properly.

So as of now, I’m fully open for business and looking for new (paying!) projects. If you have know of anybody that needs a website, please give them my info or send them to my website or my Sortfolio profile.