Anyone Interested In Helping Out With The Website Reviews?

Sometimes we’re blind to the most obvious of solutions and end up at the mercy of others for some much needed clarity. I’m certainly no exception and as it turns out, an unsolicited offer from a colleague to help with the annual website reviews couldn’t have been better timed. Moreover, it provided the virtual kick in the backside I need to officially ask for some help.

Typically, the website reviews aren’t well suited to being distributed among a group of reviewers but there’s one aspect new for the 2011 reviews that is ideally suited for that arrangement, and this is where I could use some help. In particular, having some volunteers perform the mobile readiness evaluations would be a god-send. Here’s what the work entails:

  1. Volunteers will need to visit every site in the review via a standard desktop browser connection along with one or more of the following devices running the most up to date version of their respective OS:
    1. ipad
    2. Android powered tablet (7″ screen or larger)
    3. Android powered touchscreen smartphone
  2. Using a provided checklist, verify a series of features and/or functionality on each site.

That’s it. The entire evaluation process is very structured in a dichotomous sense so volunteers should be able to get through everything without questions. But, of course, I’ll provide guidance as needed.

The only caveat to volunteering is you cannot currently work for any organization included in the review (employee or via work contract). You must also have the time to complete the evaluations by a specific date, which I will let you know if you get in touch with an offer to help (can’t let those in the review know when they are taking place now, can I?). If you’d like to help out, click the button below to get in touch.

I’d like to help out with the reviews

Speaking of Websites

One of the most enjoyable parts of consulting is launching a project following a successful development period where everyone put in a good deal of hard work and effort to produce a terrific end result. To that end, the Austin Lyric Opera launched their new Venture powered website yesterday.

So when you have a few moments, stop by and take a look around. I particularly like what they did on the Personal Giving page using Venture’s tabbed styling functionality to separate benefit levels; the really fun part is each of those tabs produces its own anchor link which allows them to use that link in an email blast or social media site and it will take the site visitor to that page with that tab open and up front.

There’s plenty of other nice content and styling throughout the site but that page (IMHO) stands out as something that works quite well and was very easy for them to put together; meaning, it was all point and click.

[sws_frames imageurl=”https://adaptistration.com/wp-content/uploads/ALO-Homepage-2.jpg” imageframe=”sws_style1″ borderradius=”5″ imagealign=”sws_center” imagesize=”640″ imagemaxheight=””] [/sws_frames]

Visit the ALO website

About Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house.

I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why.

In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

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