Volunteer WebWorking With WIMP
I will be spending a day this weekend on building a website for a local non-profit organization. The event was organized by a local group called, Web & Interactive Media Professionals, or WIMP for short. I am not yet a member of the group, but I follow and sometimes contribute to their discussions on Facebook. Here is the official description of the event titled WIMP Gives:
WIMP Gives is an event produced by Sonoma County’s most reputable group of Internet Industry professionals. It offers opportunities to WIMP members to join a team of fellow website building pros and partners them with local non-profits with a mission of building them a new website from the ground up in just one day. It also hopes to shed some light on some up and coming or lesser known non-profits in the area in order to give them a leg up and increase their reach and visibility online.
The meetup description is less dry:
WIMPgives is a FREE and PUBLIC charity hackathon, fundraiser, and workforce development event. Teams of professional volunteers will build websites for nonprofits in a single day of food, drink, and live music.
I found it a pretty exciting concept. Usually creating a website takes a couple of weeks or sometimes months as the client and the web professionals go through several iteration of planning, working out the design, finalizing the content, approving features and so on… Now we will do this all in one day.
OK, that’s not entirely accurate. We had a meeting last weekend, where
- The project teams were created, based on the number of volunteers and their skills. I will act as a project manager and content strategist working together with a designer and a developer.
- Each team got their NGO to work with via pulling out their name from a hollow R2-D2 toy. I am not sure I am allowed to share the name of the one I will work on, so I don’t. Hopefully after the job is done.
- Listened to a few words about WIMP and how the idea of the event was born.
- Listened to a presentation, aimed at the web people, on how to work within this framework of one day.
- Listened to a presentation, aimed at the people from the NGOs, on how the process works and how to prepare for it.
By the time this weekend comes we also should have a suggested sitemap for the site, so the day would go smoother. Thanks to the sponsors we will all be fed throughout the day.
I am looking forward to this event, particularly that, accidently, the NGO whose site I will work on is not too far from my own interests. The event is open to the public after noon, so come on down to Rohnert Park and check it out.
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