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About Us - Opinions Making It Happen Kishore Chavali May 2003: As you know,
North South Foundation solely depends
on volunteers for all its activities. The following is a 'behind the scenes'
story of how the website has been built. Between Sept and Dec of
last year, we, the
volunteer team, had spent significant effort to build the new
website you are looking at. It has not been an easy task. The Foundation had spent only a token amount for hosting services, and our hosting company extended special help
to us by being very flexible and supportive.
It all started with an urgent
desire expressed by volunteers for a redesigned website, which would be dynamic and responsive
to the needs of
volunteers, parents, and donors by
providing online communication. A team was quickly formed with volunteers
who were ready to contribute
with their expertise. Communication was mainly through e-mail at this
stage.
September 2002: For starters, a design of two prototypes
was proposed and sent out for
reviews. There was lot of feedback floating around through e-mail. As
decision making by team was
not really feasible through
e-mails, we had weekly conference calls on Saturday for this purpose. Since the team was distributed throughout
US, we had to
pick a time that is convenient
to everybody. These conference calls went on for about an hour every week. Volunteers joined these calls by taking time off from their
personal chores and commitments on
weekends. Sometimes volunteers
used to dial in when they were
on the road. Such was their
commitment. By the end of September, a decision was
made to go with one of the two
design proposals. It was also decided to move the website to the new hosting company to facilitate the new
design.
October 2002: Once the
design was finalized, next steps were: how to structure the content; what content to be grouped; who will provide
content for each; and what
options to be displayed.
Website was to be
user-friendly. While the main website
structure was being defined, we had two other
pressing projects: building an online registration system with a database on the
backend and a Spelling Bee online game for
children to practice.
November 2002: This
was the time to put content
together. A number of
people volunteered to write-up
content. Converted content from old site to new site format. And also all chapter
volunteers across the country were asked to test the online registration system
and give their feedback. It was designed
to help cut down paper work handled by volunteers during contest periods and allow the local team focus on conducting the event
smoothly, rather than worrying about
registration forms, checks, correspondence through snail mail, and so
on. By end of November, 60%
of the content was in
place. As we wanted to launch the new
site on the New Year's
Eve, we had very little time
left.
December 2002: Given the Holiday season, it was clear that people would not be available to test the system later in the month. Whatever was needed should be done by 15th of December. E-mails
and phone calls continued to flow across. From spelling mistakes
to formatting changes, the website content
was reviewed and updated.
In mid-December,
we launched a beta version
of the website to get feedback. At
the same time our first electronic newsletter was mailed to all supporters
asking for their input.
With feedback incorporated, dead links
eliminated, and last minute changes
to menu options implemented, we came
a long way. Thanks to
the team work, website was launched on
time on 1 Jan 2003. Online registration was also launched simultaneously.
What is unique about this
project:
None of
the members of the team physically met with each other. We could only
recognize each other by voice and in some cases we had seen photos. Even if we pass a team member on the road, we would
not know.
Here is list of team members for the project:
Kishore, Sunitha, Rameeta, Girish, Prasad Devarapalli, Gaugarin,
Raghavendra, Samit, Dr. Ratnam, Bharati, Venkat, Mahendra and many more.
Click here to view the entire web team that
worked (http://www.northsouth.org/teams.asp) with their contributions.
Our special thanks also goes to Prasad Chavali at
pier1solutions.com who readily agreed to hosting with extended special
privileges as needed by our new
website.
In April 2003 NSF website had more than 1 million hits and it is an achievement. We hope to continue to serve the community with everyone's support. We know this is only the beginning and we have to go a long way. Based on the feedback of users of Online Registration, Payment Process and content display, we plan to make necessary changes for next year. Comments/feedback on this article can be sent to admin@northsouth.org |
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