Why Chimney Rock?
Pure nostalgia. Chimney Rock was named by Paul McKeown, its founder, after the Chimney Rock Mountain in the Mournes, which he saw every morning as a child on awakening and opening the curtains. This beautiful view, that never fails to bring a smile to his face, is now recalled more from memory these days, as he has now long lived in London. The design of the company logo is based on a contour map of the Chimney Rock Mountain.
What do we do?
We design and maintain websites for sole traders, small and medium sized organisations, whether profit-making or charitable. We help them to create and strengthen their public images ("branding"), to reach out to their existing clients and to find new ones, to inform others about products, services and activities and to increase sales, both by supporting traditional channels and by direct selling through the medium of the Internet ("E-commerce").
We support the use of open technical standards and Open Source software (including Apache, Perl, PHP and MySQL), and avoid proprietary technologies that would lock our customers unnecessarily into single supplier solutions. The main exceptions are that we use Adobe Flash to provide vector graphics, animation, presentations and video, and we use Java to provide a fully programmed interface, in both cases only where this is appropriate and where no open standard would provide the same power.
We strive to produce accessible sites that can be used by people who might otherwise struggle to use them. This includes people with various disabilities, such as little or no eyesight; they may, for example, need to view pages at high zoom levels, or may use screen magnifying software or who may even have to resort to screen readers or Braille output devices. It also includes people using devices that do not provide the facilities available on an up to date desktop computer, such as mobile phones or people who may have to use older browsers. It may also include people working from behind corporate proxy servers, which might prevent e.g. Javascript, cookies, Flash or Java from loading.
Our ethos
We are a small organisation with a nice attitude, keen to please, with an ear to what it is that our customers want, rather than what we would like to do. We aim to avoid unnecessary bureaucracy (unlike some larger agencies that you might have met) and charge for actual work, rather than management and consultancy overhead.
Our Clients
A small portfolio of work we have completed for various clients can be found on the Projects page. If you like what you see, perhaps you might like to contact us using the form provided on the Contact page?
Paul McKeown
Chimney Rock was founded by Paul McKeown. He had previously worked in Information Technology since 1989, with long stints in Germany, the Netherlands and then England, working on a variety of large banking and telecommunications systems in increasingly senior roles, before finally deciding to strike out on his own. Due to his extended periods abroad, Paul reads, writes and speaks Dutch fluently and has translated some books from Dutch into English. He also a good reading and listening comprehension in German.
In his spare time he likes to play chess, which he does to a strong club and county standard, with a grading that places him in the top 10% of competitive players. He has represented Ulster internationally. He also does some coaching. Paul was writing a book about the well-known New Zealand born International Master, Bob Wade, with his blessing and cooperation, when Bob passed away in November 2008, aged 87. The book will be completed and published in 2010.