Pixelmattic Archives - Beyond Carlton

From Uday Vijayan

5 years into our existence as Beyond Carlton, it is always tempting to look back at what we can do better.

One such thing was our website. Our current site was something we created with a simple objective of telling the world we were around and what we did. It was more a digital brochure rather than a live interactive platform.

Beyond Carlton itself has evolved in 5 years and there were many things we had done and somehow we had not told our story at one place.

We believe the website could aggregate our story, our latest efforts,our hopes and aspirations. It should be the single point that people who work with us and also those who want to work with us can get to know more and join us.

In a way a great platform to talk, listen and share. As we embark on taking the Beyond Carlton movement beyond the shores of Karnataka to the rest of the country we do hope to have the website centric to this effort.

Here’s a picture of the team at work, re-building www.beyondcarlton.org

From Lakshmi Rebecca

When I first heard of Beyond Carlton needing a new website, I started thinking about what would make this website WOW on the fairly shoestring budget allocated for theoverhaul. Of course, we almost always do our research. So, my team and I looked at some of the most powerful non-profit and campaign websites out there. We looked at Included.org, Peta.org, warchild.org.uk, Tate.org.uk, notforsalecampaign.org and dozens of others. And slowly, some distinct features started appearing: parallax design, responsive UI, intelligent layout of information, social sharing-ability, interactivity, use of large images, etc. Somewhere along the line, I also started thinking about the journey of Beyond Carlton and what this new website could mean to this passionate non-profit team and to India. And then slowly, I had an ‘Ahaa!’ moment.

This new website is not about what Beyond Carlton was or is, but what Beyond Carlton means. This website wouldn’t just share about what’s been done at Beyond Carlton, but about what more each of us can and will do. Fire safety is not just the passion of the team at Beyond Carlton, but of thousands of people across India. So this website has to bring this community together and make it stronger… allow anyone to share news, share stories of change, start petitions and gather support, and enjoy a vibrant interaction space as well as blog. This should be one big campaign community and information platform. Someday soon, you will be able to start a campaign in Madurai or Nagpur, and have all of India support you with encouragement, votes and information on BeyondCarlton.org.

This new website is the beginning of a journey into the future. A bigger, brighter, stronger and safer future for India. And my team and I at Red Bangle are proud to have been part of this in a little way. Happy change-making to you and us at Beyond Carlton!