A team of 10 web professionals, a deserving non-profit and just 24 hours to redesign a website. That’s the core outline of the Overnight Website Challenge for each of the 18 teams in this year’s event.
A packed room at the 2011 Overnight Web Challenge.
Three of Spyder Trap’s web staff participated as part of the Concrete5.MN team. Perry Govier (Developer), Jeff Wagner (Creative Director) and I laughed in the face of sleep for one weekend.
At 9:00am Saturday, we learned that the Children’s Program of Northern Ireland would be our non-profit client and we were off to the races to push pixels and code. CPNI brings youth from Northern Ireland that experience extreme religious and political strife to Minnesota for five weeks to live with a host family and enjoy being a kid. Over 6,500 children have benefited from this program since it’s inception over 35 years ago.
More Than A Website Redesign
The Concrete5.MN team put together a great strategy to help CPNI completely revamp their look in just 24 hours and produced not only a website for them but a new logo, business cards, a mobile website, email marketing and a Facebook page.
Here are the before and after screen shots of the CPNI website.
CPNI's old website, ready to be made "better".
The NEW web design.
The mobile website for CPNI
One of the main features we designed was a Host Family Tour to help them recruit host families here in the Midwest, the non-profits biggest need. This single page presentation plays to the emotional impact the kids and families can have on each other and moves a family to get involved.
One slide of a 7 slide layout to attract host families.
Additionally we were able to take their host family application from a PDF to an easy 6 step online form, integrate a Google Map of past host family locations and make their site easy to manage with Concrete5 as their content management system.
Web Design Can Be Extreme
The Overnight Website Challenge is like no other event I’ve been a part of. The word challenge is spot on. It was far more intense than I had anticipated and the flow of feeling in control, to losing that control hour by hour was a crazy ride.
Sheila of CPNI discusses their project with me.
In the end, I’m very proud of the work we produced for our client, the time spent with Sheila from CPNI and the lessons I learned from working so closely and intensely with a client for 24 hours straight.
The event was well run, integrated fun breaks (like me meeting Senator Al Franken) , entertainment and an endless supply of food, snacks and beverages. The Nerdery and the event sponsors do a fantastic job.
Here are a few more pieces from the event:
- My Flickr gallery of photos
- My video interview with Tech.MN
