Ben McNelly

24 years old

Belle Center, MO

Male

About

Personal:
My Name is Ben. um.... ok, well I am 22 years old, and have been courting the love of my life for 5 years and we make a great team. Right now I am trying to find that happy place between work and family time, and increasingly shifting my priorities towards the latter. I belong to a great family of believers at Central Christian Center, in Joplin MO. I am also trying to find my stride in the realm of ministry. (If life is a polar ice cap run way, I am the walrus trying to fly..) But I can do all things through Christ who makes me strong.

Work:
A bit of a odd one in the development circle/loop, I tend to advance my killer skillz whenever a new site comes along. Started out programing BASIC, decided programing was fun but ultimately stupid (hey I was 7) and moved on to the glorious life of a designer. Mainly focusing on print for several years, I developed a strong base of vector/raster skills. Quickly though I began to realize that for my design to go anywhere it needed to go on the internet. So I experimented with flash and html for a few years, while doing more interactive cd-roms and director projects/video/3d than anything. My big push forward came 4 years ago when my graphic prowess got me hired at a web development company. With a strong mentor in the standards, and ridiculous deadlines I began to grow into a "web developer". I had always just sliced up photoshop templates into tables and handed it off to a programmer. No more. I was expected to take whatever templating system, in whatever random language and cms we picked out, and build the page layouts. I quickly (after about 3 sites in tables) ok, slowly.. began to start exploring the "right" way to build websites because now I could see the process from the programmers point of view. After learning python and django I really took off in "getting" programing. And now when I build sites, I have more fun with molding my data and making a site work from inside out more than the graphic design part. Now well beyond just a template-tag fiend, I enjoy learning new languages and trying different platforms. I am on a bit of expression engine kick right now, although I still pull out django for the insane sites.

On a side note:
I am also a nerd, but as a redeeming factor... nm, can't think of anything.