Now, you may be wondering who we have working on this amazing new website. Well, I just happen to have the answer. While Erm the Worm is a good guess, our striped insect friend is an excellent reader but not too hot with web design. However, Solution Architect Keith Minder is very savvy with web design and is the perfect guy for the job of creating Promising Pages new site for many reasons.
Keith Minder was raised in the not too far away small town of Hopkins, South Carolina. He moved to Charlotte when he got a job in I.T. with Microsoft, and he now runs Twork Technology. Keith first became aware of Promising Pages at a Charlotte Metro Chamber luncheon where Kristina Cruise spoke about our Big Hairy Audacious Goal of collecting and redistributing 1 million children’s books by the end of 2012. After hearing the Promising Pages objective, Keith was immediately hooked. When asked what made him drawn to Promising Pages, his responses largely connected to his childhood.
A long time lover of books, Keith told me he was constantly reading as a kid. Keith recalls, “I didn’t grow up with a lot of money, and we didn’t have cable. I lived in a small town with dirt roads. I would go to my grandmother’s house and just lie down on the floor in front of the book shelf and spend hours getting lost in those books.” A series of books Keith remembers fondly is the Childcraft World Encyclopedias. He learned much about African American culture from those books, which he says was an essential part of his upbringing as an African American adolescent growing up in the rural South. He says, “Reading about the black condition and the history of accomplishments in the African American community was really transformative for my self-esteem as a teenager.”
Keith made some big accomplishments himself after reading Popular Science technical books. From this written knowledge, he taught himself as a child how to program a computer. A family member bought him a Tandy Color Computer 2, which he practiced programming on. He went on to win a district-wide media competition at only eleven years old! If that isn’t impressive, I don’t know what is.
Today, Keith is a father of four children and owner of a house full of books. Keith tells me, “Aside from my background, Promising Pages also caught my attention because my kids have so many books and I know they’re not going to read all of them.”
As far as the specifics of the website, Keith provided me with a few spoilers. “We’re giving it a cleaner, easier layout,” Keith says. “There is going to be a section for news stories. You’ll be able to add new book drop-off locations in the system and provide viewers driving directions. We’re also adding a ticker to the homepage to keep a total of books Promising Pages receives.” That means everyone will be able to see as we collect and count to 1 million books!
Promising Pages would like to give a huge heartfelt thank you to Keith Minder and Twork Technology. If you want to know more about the new site, keep your eyes peeled for our Facebook (http://on.fb.me/xzmPS3 and http://on.fb.me/zuQEdR ) and our Twitter (http://bit.ly/zGptil ) updates. March 1st also kicks off our "Feed the Body, Feed the Mind" campaign where Carolina HealthCare Systems will be collecting books at all 300 locations. We will use those books to stuff into food backpacks that go to kids that otherwise wouldn't have access to food over the weekend. Two beautiful partnerships, one incredible month!
--Faith Lippard, Promising Pages Blogger
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