Due credit: Challenge champs and an Oscar-speech-styled thanks, y’all

First, a blanket thanks to all who made the 2010 Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge our best yet. While this friendly competition has an all-encompassing winners’ circle, top billing goes to the champs, Team Placeholder – whose designated nonprofit, Dakota Wicohan, had no website whatsoever when our last long-lost weekend began. Look at them now, and watch how their team (which included eight people from Larsen, a design, branding, marketing and interactive agency) delivered the goods, literally overnight.

Dakota Wicohan/Team Placeholder at Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge from The Nerdery on Vimeo.

RSVP here for our “Interactive on Impossible Deadlines” webinar next Thursday at 3:00 p.m. Central (we’re back on normal business hours), featuring Team Placeholder captain Reid Durbin (from Larsen) and other Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge vets.

OK, the previous blanket statement of thanks to the many Challenge supporters simply will not do. We’re gonna have to name names.

Competition is good, but judging such a competition could not have been easy – and for making tough choices in a timely yet thoughtful and gracious manner, we thank our judges:

Christine Durand, communication director, Minnesota Council of Nonprofits
Dan Grigsby, founder of Mobile Orchard and tech community organizer
Bob Huff, head of LaBreche Branding
Dana Nelson, executive director, GiveMN.org

We can’t sufficiently thank sponsors Benchmark Learning, LaBreche and ReliaCloud for supporting our nerdathon and its participants in their own meaningful ways. Benchmark Learning will donate training to nonprofits and give half-price rates to volunteer developers. They also hosted our pre-Challenge mixer, providing space (and beverages) for constructive speed dating. LaBreche, our frequent agency partner, joined us this year as an event sponsor and treated all the nonprofits to a pre-Challenge branding/interactive strategy session. VISI offered each nonprofit complimentary web hosting, including the option for its ReliaCloud service; they also provided each volunteer developer a $100 ReliaCloud credit.

We’d also like to send a shout out to all of our in-kind donors and meal sponsors who helped us to make sure that while participants may have been tired, at least they weren’t running on empty.

Bruegger’s (five stores donated a combined 340 bagels)
Buffalo Wild Wings (seven stores donated a combined 1,200 wings/countless potato wedges)
Chipotle (two stores donated a combined 200 burritos)
Cub (Minnetonka store donated gift card for groceries)
Jimmy Johns (two stores donated a combined five sandwich trays)
Kowalski’s (donated gift card for groceries)
Peace Coffee (donated 25 pounds of coffee)
Pizza Luce’ (donated 40 pizzas)
Red Bull (donated five cases of canned sleep substitute)

These companies also supported The Challenge in their own unique ways:

Adobe (prize donation of Flash Builder 3)
Arthouse (generously stepped up w/swag-bag donations)
GitHub (provided source code repositories)
Flashbelt (prize donation, tickets to conference)
Pilotvibe (pro-bono audio recording and editing for nonprofits/teams, including Dakota Wicohan)
Telerik (donated Sitefinity ASP.NET CMS to .NERD team)
Unwind Within (chair massages to revive weary workers)

We (the “royal we” of Mark Hurlburt and I) want to personally thank Nerdery founders Luke Bucklin, Mike Derheim, Mike Schmidt for having the vision to see how much good an event like this can do in our community, and having the faith to let us take time away from our “real” jobs to further our ongoing experiment of mixing the nerdy with the needy. Also, thanks for being there to make the first of many pots of coffee (Luke), making multiple food runs (Mike D) and a midnight run for more coffee creamer (Mike S). And, oh yeah, about 3,800 hours of professional web development services were freely given to 16 nonprofits last weekend because of your willingness to run with an idea (Hurlburt’s) that was (and remains) just mad enough to work.

In addition to having volunteers on five of 16 development teams and the aforementioned extras on-hand, The Nerdery also dispatched a band of volunteers who came (and many stayed) to help keep the event running as smoothly as possible. Thanks to Jessica Mogen, Matt Tonak, Jodi Chromey, David Kam, Annette Johnson, Ginger Sorvari Bucklin, Heidi Schmidt, Kai Esbensen, Kris Szafranski, Dave Bucklin, Theresa Dahlberg, Brendan Beckham, Bruce Peterson, Simon Banks, Sara Tabor, Sonja Peterson, Bill Titler, Scott Spillman, Tony Webster and Merne Williams.

Our hosts at the U of M Continuing Education Conference Center deserve props for again letting us rock-star their fine facility, with particular thanks to Ken Gay, Mike Wybierala, Leslie Berry and Wendy Hanson.

The crescendo from the orchestra pit tells me I’ve rambled long enough, so thanks again, everyone – particularly anyone I’ve fool-heartedly forgotten.

On this blog, we’ll continue to post profiles of the finished sites created at The Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge, so stay tuned.

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