Martin Connelly

Principal and Digital Director at Helm Digital, Portland, Maine.

A personal site can be a manifesto, a resume, a portfolio, a record. This is perhaps none of those, or maybe all of them. I’ve spent my career on the internet — as a writer, as a developer, as a marketer, as a strategist. For the last decade or more, I’ve done so at First Pier & Helm Digital — which are, for all intents and purposes, one and the same, and I am proud of that work.

Before that, I was a jack of some trades — a whitewater raft guide, a bagel baker, a magazine writer, the founder of Little Red Cup Tea. I produced a short-run documentary podcast about and with my two-year-old daughter until being the father of a two-year-old got in the way.

I’m a lover of obscure allusion, of finding the system behind the problem, of a hobby imagined but not actually realized. Presently, I am deep in the weeds of building AI systems for our small team. And truthfully, neglecting the weeds that have overtaken my garden.

Helm Digital and First Pier

I am a principal and digital director at Helm Digital, a Portland agency comprising First Pier, Vernacular, and Wayfound. I am ultimately accountable, occasionally insightful, and mostly working to make life better for our team and our clients.

I tend to see work as a series of problems, and I most enjoy the brackish waters where the hard part is defining success, identifying the evidence that would change the strategy, and choosing the next right thing.

Magazine Writing

Primarily based in St. John’s, Newfoundland, writing online, in print, and for radio. A smattering of old pieces:

Little Red Cup Tea

A tin of Little Red Cup tea beside a gaiwan of wet oolong leaf, a glass pitcher of pale gold tea, and two cups.

Little Red Cup is based in Maine and imports organic, loose leaf Chinese tea. A project, a passion, and an education since 2012.

Whitewater Guiding

Eight people in helmets and life jackets paddling a blue raft through a large standing wave on a fast river.

Guiding on the Kennebec River, Maine. 2009.