Judy was collared in Friends House today to be pointed towards the Eastbourne Quakers website, here. As her representative on the world wide web, I was charged to have a look.

The site is simple enough not to scare the horses and has a good eye on the local needs of potential visitors (as well as its Google prominence) by including links to relevant services. It treads the difficult line between keeping Quaker practice simple and not generalising. However, where it excels is in a rather high tech feature: video interviews with Friends of different ages on such questions as 'Do you have to be a pacifist' and 'Where does evil come from?'.

There is a struggle which Meetings are facing as well as other organisations and media outlets. Just because the technology is there, does that mean we all need to jump on the latest podblog bandwagon? There are often techy types forging ahead with the latest big thing (or a simple online calender), only for it to fall flat when nobody else can maintain the technology or work out how to use it (I know this feeling well). However, this seems like a very well targeted project. Friends willing to speak didn't need to know about the technology, they could just be filmed and then somebody puts the videos up in a well rounded package.

Sad to say, I couldn't quite get the videos working on our Office Macs (probably because I'm resisting downloading Media Player, but a bit of tinkering may have done it), but if Eastbourne could go one step further and turn the films into podcasts that could be viewed on iTunes, you'd have the makings of a very accessible medium, especially for young people seeking answers to difficult questions.

Another improvement, of course, would be a link to our website. As they say in cyberspace, :)