McWilliams’ World

Oshkosh Area School District web site

Early in 2005 I was invited to be on an advisory board for the redesign of the Oshkosh Area School District’s web site - which was in desperate need of an upgrade. A number of other volunteers from various businesses and fields of expertise were also asked to participate. Blue Door Consulting was contracted to come in an facilitate the program.

I was initially in the general user focus group dealing with what content the site should have, what works what doesn’t, etc.. but was then asked to serve on the technology focus group dealing with the technology to be used for the site, best practices, hosting, database and ultimately selecting the company to develop the site for us.

Early on, Heidi and Brenda of Blue Door asked my opinion of the scope and aggressive time-line of the project. Initial projection was to have the site done in about 6mo time (basically in enough time to launch by the start of the 2005 fall semester). Having a basic understanding of what they wanted to do and all they wanted to accomplished I said it was doubtful that they’d hit that target. It wasn’t till late August that they got around to selecting a company to develop the site for us and they were still hoping for a Nov launch - still a herculean feat for any development house.  But they pressed on and by Jan they had a prototype site up and running and shortly afterwords went live.

I won’t go into a ton of detail but the site is nicely done, easy to navigate and encompasses all of our district schools. There are still features to be added in the future but now the groundwork has been laid for a successful site. Overall, a job well done by all.

It was a great honor and a great experience to be a part of this comity. Thanks again to Blue Door for inviting me.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 20th, 2006 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.