During the COVID pandemic, I volunteered as Interim Web Chair for an NGO called ETAS (English Teachers Assoc of Switzerland) …
Lock-Down
It was a tough time for everyone, teachers of course included !! ETAS stepped up its offerings of online pub quizzes (BYOB ;-D), conferences, meetings, etc. The masterful and intrepid President Ben was keen to transition ETAS’ Civi / Drupal website to a Civi / WordPress site, so I jumped into the fray to give a technical hand and try to drum up support !! ;-D
Icebergs & Websites
I’ve always thought that icebergs & websites are similar in that most folks only see the tippy tippy top. Below is a slide from my 1st pitch to the ETAS Executive Committee. I wanted to recruit / train peeps on frontend content management sot that I could hang out in the ominous underbelly of our web environment …
Gather Town
The ETAS Annual Conferences of 2021 & 2022 were both held online w/ Zoom & Gather Town while the virus that shall not be named raged on (and on …) !! As such, Alice and I spent countless hours experimenting, innovating, building our virtual conference spaces … often at very odd times of night !! ;-D I must also thank Amy for her assistance w/ video-conferencing testing … all that shared laughter was essential !! ;-D I regret that I don’t have any screenshots of the final environment but here’s a development shot that I took during an Alpha+ phase:
… ’twas fun, educational & stressful. From the delegates’ feedback, I think we pulled it off !! ;-D For the record, I did remove the silly, experimental graphics from our Gather Town space before ETAS went live w/ the final environment … jus’ sayin’ !! ;-D
Back to the Website Upgrade
Conference activities aside, ETAS found itself in web purgatory for roughly 2 years. That’s to say that we were maintaining Civi / Drupal (applying patches left & right) while at the same time developing the Brave New Civi / WordPress World. We contracted gurus Kevin & Dana at Tadpole to give us a hand, and I did my very bestest to act as the central communication hub to make things happen.
Due to compounded delays, my term as Interim Web Chair ended before the site was launched. But I was definitely all in when I was in !! Below is a mish-mash of mock-ups, informational bits, cheat sheets — some technical, some not — made for different peeps at different times while trying to get that site upgraded … talk about Web Spinning … sheesh !! ;-D
– The Grateful Dead