Sandvox Website Profile: “Random Acts of Tech”

My website is a collection of projects. I update each project as I make progress. Sometimes I work on multiple projects at once. For instance, my project titled Mystery Device is a small electronic device for which I am custom building various components. If some of the processes take some time to be left alone, I will use that time to work on Beerafication. Which is a project where I convert my studio in a community maker space (Artisan's Asylum) into a small "home" brewery. There are 3 main goals I wish to achieve with the site. First, I want a clear history of the entire process of these projects once they are completed. Secondly, I want to provide a resource for people who need some guidance on their own tech endeavors.

The Target audience for randomactsoftech.com is fellow makers and hackers - people who try and make technology work for their specific needs. I think it will be a valuable tool for both children and adults who want to make something. I also think that certain aspects of the site can be enjoyed purely for the entertainment value. There are processes shown that many people never thought existed or possible on a small personal scale. And of course, beer lovers!

I am targeting an audience that is deeply rooted in a sense of community. Most of the information I post can be found in various forums around the Internet, most with much more technical explanations. However, being a photographer and a decent writer I feel that the project I chronicle are brought to life in a way that most other sites and forums can't.

Community is a huge factor with my site. It is necessary for me and others like me to continue doing what we do. For example, I posted a link to my site on a forum about making your own PCB boards. I thought I might get some traffic that way. I was surprised when I received an email reply from that forum from a gentleman who visited my site, read through my progress on a certain project, returned to the forum and posted some tips on how I could improve my process. He also told me that he was inspired the get back into doing things of that nature himself. Since then I have adopted some of his advice and been able to pass it on to my readers.

I chose to start out with "Clockwork Grey." It was simple. It gave me enough prebuilt content for me to fill in the things I had already while leaving me enough blank canvas to really make it my own.

There were a few difficulties that I had to overcome to get exactly what I wanted. I wanted a blog-like set up, but I didn't want it in the typical blog style. I wanted to update the content every day, but I wanted the individual projects to read like stories. I also wanted to give visitors an overview of all of my projects right from the home page; to do that I made all of my projects one large collection and then indexed the collection on the home page. I was really impressed with the variables that I could adjust to get it just right. I also wanted to give readers an option to comment on the projects, as well as sign up for updates on specific projects. For comments, I used htmlcommentbox.com with a raw HTML object. I did the same thing with an embeded subscribe form from mailchimp.com. they both worked beautifully.