Get that project going! 0 to 60 in less than one week.

I take no credit for our latest venture.  After stumbling upon Rachel Reuben’s recent post on .eduGuru just after our Christmas break, we quickly decided it was something we needed to move on for our fall 2009 students.  It was actually something that I had been mulling over since the Innovative Educators’ conference in Cincinnati this past June, but I wasn’t sure we had the resources to make it happen.  Once I had read Rachel’s post, I knew it was something that we could get going quickly.

So last Wednesday I began the process of putting a similar site together from Hope.  The biggest elements that required attention were the overall brand of the page and the actual coding of those elements.  Once I had that stuff figured out, it was basically a 6-8 hour project, start to finish (this may beg a more thorough blog post at a later date).  Monday morning we invited the first batch of accepted students, and by the end of the day we had over 120 members and 5000 pageviews on the site, Hope 2013.

The way this project happened just amazes me.  A blog post from a school in New York was inspirational enough for a school in Michigan to put it in place, and I have no doubt that this testimonial will encourage another school to do the same.  More than that, I think the way we accomplished this task is going to filter into the way we do other things in our office.  I don’t think we can rely on the “committee/task force” model of old — our world is getting way too small for that.

A huge thank you to Rachel for sharing her experience.  I am continually convinced that this network of recruiters/web developers/counselors/administrators in higher ed will change the way we all do business for the better!