I’m often asked what I do and I always have trouble explaining it. Sometimes I use the analogy that I’m an interpreter translating complex technical speak to real-world needs. Recently, I’ve started using the analogy of a midwife who sees a project through from conception to the birth of a new site (interestingly, many projects do take about 9 months. Hmm).

We recently launched the new Demos.org and I’m very proud to have been involved. Unlike most projects, I didn’t see the project through from start to finish. I took it over mid-stream from my colleague Juan Gonzalez and it could have easily derailed into a mess. Project managers have so much institutional knowledge on a project and as much as we document and plan, many things can get lost when you switch project managers. Luckily, this project included awesome team members (both internally and on the client side) and we didn’t miss a beat. We successfully launched the site last month without any major glitches.

About Demos

Demos is an awesome organization. I just love what they do. In the middle of working on their site and finding and fixing bugs, I would find myself sidetracked reading one of their many really interesting reports or blog posts. I just kept nodding and nodding thinking, “yes! I agree!”

Demos is a national organization working on issues that matter to us all. Economic inequality? Yup, they work on that and are producing some of the best content about our economic woes, in my opinion. Voting rights? You bet they’re on the front lines working to protect our democracy. Speaking of front lines, one of my favorite parts of the site is their newsroom which is frequently updated with media appearances by their deep cast of experts including Bob Herbert, David Callahan, and Tamara Draut just to name a few. A veritable all-star team.

In partnership with Biro Creative, we worked with Demos for about 9 months (see!) to plan, design, develop, test, and launch their beautiful new site. The biggest challenge came down to making everything fit. Websites are like puzzles with moving pieces and it’s always a struggle to make sure things connect for a seamless visitor experience. For example, one blog post needs to connect to the expert that wrote it, who also recently wrote a publication which also generated a media hit. Phew. Complex but it all came together.

Some highlights:

• Each issue has a landing page (see: http://www.demos.org/issue/economy-opportunity) that elegantly and dynamically pulls in content from elsewhere on the site; be it publications on that issue, media hits, issue experts, etc.
• There is also a powerful publications and books search feature, allowing a visitor to find publications or books on any issue Demos works on, sorted by date or author. See http://www.demos.org/publications and http://www.demos.org/books

Whether I’m called a midwife, a translator, or just a project manager, it’s clients like Demos that make my job so fun. They were a pleasure to work with and the site turned out great.

Many thanks to Alex and Lauren from Demos for their patience and fun check-in calls, to my fellow Dittos Ethan, Jenn, and Jeremy for their awesome skills and amazing technical and strategic contributions to the project, to Juan for his leadership for the first half of the project and help in the transition, and to Biro Creative for a great design.