Mark Conroy is a web developer and public speaker based in Galway, Ireland. A former English teacher by profession, he began designing websites as a hobby for friends' bands and local community groups. Since his humble beginning with Adobe Dreamweaver, he has graduated to working, almost exclusively, with Drupal, embracing open source technology whenever possible. As a speaker, he mostly presents on uses of digital media for effective campaigning. He has also presented at Drupal for Government days in Dublin on creating social networks using Drupal. Mark is a co-organizer of the monthly Galway Drupal Meetup.

As a freelance developer working under the name A Design For Life—www.adesignforlife.net, Mark has worked on a number of large projects, not least of which was the redevelopment of the Ireland Reaching Out website (www.irelandxo.com) that he built single-handedly from the ground up, using a combination of Drupal Commons (and some extra contributed Drupal modules), Artisteer, CSS, and CiviCRM. All functionality on the site was completed using innovative approaches to pre-existing modules from drupal.org. He also built and continues to maintain the political campaigns and contacts website contact.ie, which has become the most popular online method for contacting politicians in Ireland.

This is the first technical book Mark has worked on. He has, however, published a textbook for English students, In Transition: An Anthology of Texts and Tasks for Transition Year Students, is awaiting publication of a second English textbook, and is about to start work on his third.

Mark is available for long and/or short-term freelance work, especially in the area of Drupal and campaign technologies. You can contact him at <[email protected]> or <[email protected]>.