About

Hi. I’m Ben Murray and I live in Washington, DC.

I work as a digital advocacy strategist for Blue State Digital, where I help non-profits, foundations and corporations build communities, raise money and advocate online. It’s a wonderful place.

I previously spent several years at the Podesta Group, a lobbying and public relations firm in Washington.

I earned a master’s degree in politics and communication from the London School of Economics & Political Science. I had too many questions about how the Internet is changing the way people participate in civil society and build movements. My time in London answered a few, but raised thousands more. Learning appears to be a long process and the Internet won’t stay still.

I spent my undergraduate years at American University studying political science and international studies. There, I developed a passion for studying the Internet and its role in changing political activism and civil engagement around the United States. I researched the use of cell phones in West Africa and built a website for students to petition the university administration. Who knew shower heads could elicit so much anger?

I also like to take pictures and travel.  I was once a swimmer, but am miserably inadequate in the pool these days.  I love a good glass of scotch.

Colophon

This website has been around, in various forms, since the summer of 2002.  It is primarily a sandbox for experiments in function and design, and only occasionally a soapbox to stand on.

The current iteration, launched March 2012, is built on WordPress and hosted at Media Temple, with a design originally from Christian Budschedl. It is responsive, adheres to a strict grid structure and utilizes WordPress’s new “post type”, which allows for differentiation between media types. It is the third in a series of yearly design overhauls.

I started a website in 2002 while away at summer school using a free hosting service, Dreamweaver and lots of awful coding. There was a flash intro. I added Movable Type that fall, moved to paid hosting, bought brmurray.com and started learning to code for myself. Over time, I discovered and forgot about the site, revisiting it in periods of curiosity and boredom.

In 2008, I changed the domain to allpoliticsisdigital.com for a postgraduate course I audited in online communications. The posts from that semester mark the beginning of the current website, and are still available. Eventually, the domain changed once again to benmurray.us.

I’ve since hosted at least a dozen other services and websites at various subdomains, many of which still exist.

Caveat

The posts, comments and expressions on this blog are mine alone and do not intentionally reflect the beliefs of my employer, my clients or anyone else.