The Official Pairings

We’re about 50 minutes into the 24-hour Webchallenge and the nerds have met their nonprofits. Here’s the official pairings:

1. The Return of the Team Redundancy Team Part 2 is teamed with Minnesota Environmental Partnership.
2. Codex is teamed with Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless.
3. Push N Run is teamed with Hourcar
4. Twin Cities EE is teamed with Franconia Sculpture Park
5. Raxacoricofallapatorius with The Windmill Project.
6. PHP Nerds- Beta with Answer
7. Drupal Rocks! with Bakken Museum.
8. Full Court WordPress with Youth Performance Company
9. Ruby.MN with Career Solutions Inc.
10. Two Unicorns, One Moon with West African Medical Missions
11. Team BIOS with Community Neighborhood Housing Services
12. Drop Shadows Not Bombs with North Star Therapy Animals
13. Team Pegacorn with Metro CISM Team
14. Run PHP with Cancer Legal Line
15. Get Off My LAN with TVBYGIRLS
16. Ruby Off Rails with Center for Homicide Research
17. Sleep-Deprivation Research Team #4 with The Valley Friendship Club
18. The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen with Little Voyageurs Montessori School

Our annual pre-challenge advice for nerds & nonprofits (new & improved!)

We’re two days way from the fifth Twin Cities Overnight Website Challenge. Over the years we’ve culled quite a bit of advice from web pros, nonprofits, and our own nerds alike. Every year, in an effort to help you be as prepared as possible for the 24-hour nerd-a-thon, we update this post and share it with you.

Are you a webchallenge vet? Leave your helpful hints in the comments and we’ll add them to this list for next time!

Advice for All Attendees

• Bring slippers and sweatpants! Who wants to be wearing jeans at 3am?
• Load up on Free Buzz Aeropress, regular or iced.
• Drink lots of water and remember that at 3AM you might not be as productive as you wish you were, and that’s okay. Patience is key. Try to relax, enjoy it, and be satisfied with whatever you’re able to accomplish.
• Bananas help keep you awake and focused. True story.
• Plan a ride home afterward. You don’t want to drive after being up that long.
• Bring a toothbrush and deodorant, so you can get all prim and proper prior to our presentation.
• Bring Chapstick, Burt’s Bees, or whatever your lip balm of choice is. Trust us, you’ll be happy you did.
• There will be a “crash room,” lights out and quiet. It will have two twin-sized air mattresses up for grabs, or you can curl up on the floor. Some nerds are bringing sleeping bags (others choose to curl up in the entrails of a ton-ton).

Advice for web pros

Come prepared

• Get your critical thinking tasks done as early in the game as possible.
• Assess risks as early as possible, too. You don’t want to be solving challenging problems at 4 AM.
• Work in small bursts. Attack something concrete for 30-60 minutes. Accomplish it. Take a 10-minute break.

Designate roles now
Designate a person who can respect everyone’s opinions and can diplomatically make tough choices when there are differences of opinion. Democracy and waiting for consensus don’t work well on short timelines. Choose the one person who you can all be angry at. Ideally, this would be your producer or your team lead. Other roles to designate:

• Server / connectivity / tech support
• Database guru
• Source control and backup master
• Back-end CMS team
• Front-end html/css integration team
• Flash / jquery / front end dev
• Design team
• Writing / content plan
• ia / wire-frames
• Producer
• Sweeper
• Special ops

Get your tools in order

• Choose your tools – server environment, dev language, frameworks, CMS, plugins, etc.
• Staying in sync with your team is critical. Consider what IM everyone will use, and email addresses. Share a list with everyone or create a mailing list. Come prepared with a platform to work on, be it a CMS or framework, and work out dev server logistics, passwords, svn/git users for all your team members.
• Go with what you know. Also, from one of our nerds: Our team made use of Nerdery’s Google Docs for info/collaboration last year, same with svn. Point is, you do this stuff every day, rely on your proven workflow and tools.
• Research what you don’t know. You don’t want to be figuring too much out the night of the challenge.
• Have an expert on your team for anything you’re choosing to use.

Have a backup plan. If that new CMS you wanted to use doesn’t work out the way you were planning, be prepared to fall back on that clumsy solution you know like the back of your hand. Be prepared to make this hard decision within a few hours of starting.

Be connected

• Determine if everyone is using their own sandbox on their computer or a central server. If using a server, set it up before you get to the webchallenge.
• Get everything you plan to use running.
• Make sure everyone will be able to connect to it.
• Test / simulate if possible.

You DO NOT want to spend the first three hours of the challenge sorting through connectivity issues, getting passwords, and figuring out how to turn off php magic-quotes and get mod-rewrite working correctly in order to get your CMS running.

Back it up

• Use source control. Or, have a really good plan for making snapshot backups.
• Have one or two people on the team make local backups at key checkpoints.
• Count on someone trashing the wrong folder and deleting four hours of work at 6AM – that someone will probably be you.

Plan your attack

• Get the whole team together for the first hour to discuss your plan with the client.
• Make sure you understand their audience(s) before you begin anything else.
• Make a site map. The client will hopefully bring their ideas to get the discussion started.
• Content audit – understand what needs to be written, what images need to be obtained, where to source content for each section of the site map.
• Spend time wireframing.
• Get hosting figured out right away, get all their credentials in one place: social media logins, domain registrar info, etc. Assign someone to own this information with the non-profit.

Listen to your client. Stand with what you believe is the right solution, but if you disagree on something in these early stages, don’t be afraid to listen some more. It’s worth the time. Remember that you both want to make the best site possible. Also, LIMIT THE SCOPE! You won’t get as much done as you want. Most non-profits will shoot for the moon and be scattered on their priorities. Help them get there but also help them remain realistic on expectations for what can be accomplished.

Outside of the standard CMS and site dev, plan on tackling only 1 or 2 custom features that address a core business objective.

• Have one owner per custom feature. This is your special ops people (person).
• Failure or difficulty here should not jeopardize the rest of the project.

The Presentation

• Start work on your presentation right away.
• Assign a presenter.
• This is a joint effort between the team presenter and the client.
• Your presentation starts when you begin planning. The output of your planning session should be an outline for what you want to accomplish. You want to present that the next day as an outline of what you  did accomplish.
• Do not start preparing this at six in the morning. You will have the effective IQ of a can of V8. Nobody cares about what tomato and celery have to say.

Advice from the Judging Corner

• Listen, listen, listen to your nonprofit’s needs and objectives. The more your site’s features can reflect what your nonprofit is asking for, the better.
• The judging happens during the last 3 hours of the 24-hour window. No, your site doesn’t have to be 100% done for the presentation, but it should be at a place where you can demo something.
• Focus on your site, not your presentation. The judges love seeing your site. Not your Powerpoint. Demo > Powerpoint. Seriously.
• Be sure to demo both the user experience and admin functions. If you’ve added custom admin features to your CMS, be sure to demo them. The judges want to know that the nonprofit can manage this site on their own.
• +1 to the Limit Your Scope advice. Judges are impressed with scope that can realistically be accomplished in 24 hours.
• Did I mention demo? Yeah, be ready to demo. Make sure you’ve got some functional site features. Enter content on key landing pages. QA your key functions. Solid demo = judge love.

Advice for nonprofits

Come prepared

• You know your business better than anyone else, the better you can communicate this to your team the more effective your site will be.
• The faster you can transfer this knowledge, the more time your team gets to work on making things to solve your problem.

Delegate expertise

• Your team knows design, understands user experience, and has experience making successful sites.
• Send an expert that can represent and communicate your organization’s’s mission, brand, and message.
• Allow your team to choose the tools they believe will best enable them to solve your organization’s problem.

Understand your objectives

• What does your website need to accomplish? What’s your goal? What would a successful site look like / what role would it perform? Who does your site need to talk to? Clients? Donors? Volunteers? The Public? Staff?
• Rank those audiences in order of their importance with respect to the site. Who does the site need to serve: Volunteers, Clients, and then Donors or Clients, Donors, and then Volunteers. This is hard, but you need to make a decision here.
• For each audience, what does the site need to do for them? Why do they come to your site? What do they want to accomplish when they get there? What do you want to entice them to do?

Make a sitemap

• You can do this on a whiteboard or with post-its.
• Make a page for each piece of content that you can think of: home page, how to volunteer, about us, staff, location map, what we do, etc.
• Make sure you have accommodated the content that is essential to your primary audiences.
• Organize these pages into groups, sometimes it helps to start first by grouping by audience. Also try grouping it by subject matter.

Try to keep the site from being more than three levels deep. Then aim to organize things at a max of two levels deep. Can you take it to one level? Find the balance between organization and the ease with which users can find your content.

Plan your content

• Does a page include photos?
• Other than just a few paragraphs of text, are there other relevant data types to think about? Dates, youtube videos, inventory, links to other pages.
• Special pages to consider with specific logic and data: job postings, events, press releases, blogs, etc.

Find your content

• Plan on bringing everything to the event that might be edited and incorporated into the final site.
• Any content, images, or copy that isn’t brought to the event ready-to-go and awesome will need to be produced and written before it can be edited and incorporated into the site. Is this where you want your team to be spending their time?
• You might be lucky and have a word-smith on your team. It’s also possible that you’ll end up with programmers writing your homepage copy. Think about that.
• Images. Photography. Big. Beautiful. Personal. Bring them.
• Logos, and brand assets. Vector format, if possible.

Plan on participating

• You should expect to be a major contributor to your team.
• Your contribution will make the work better.
• A joint effort will be a huge motivator for all team members. At 5 AM you don’t want any team members feeling like slave labor. Your skin in the game will prevent that from happening.
• Again, you have unique and special knowledge about your organization that can only make the work more relevant.

Web Challenge Prizes For Web Volunteers

With the Challenge just days away, we wanted to give a sneak peek at the prizes. If you’re on a team, now’s the time to start planning how you’ll disperse your tickets.

Tandem Skydive with photo/video (235 pound limit)

Jump out of a plane with a complete stranger strapped to your back and pray they know what they’re doing. This gift certificate to Skydive Minnesota gives you that chance – provided you don’t weigh over 235 pounds and are at least 18 years old. Skydive Minnesota is located in Milaca, MN, about 70 miles north of Minneapolis.

The “New” iPad (black) 16GB with Wi-Fi and Smart Cover

Have the original iPad but never got around to upgrading? Friend, that is sooo 2010. Win this sleek new black iPad, released just one week ago, and don’t be embarrassed to venture out into public again. Until the next, “newer” iPad comes out, that is.

The “New” iPad (white) 16GB with Wi-Fi and Smart Cover

Yeah, there’s that black iPad over there. But black isn’t your color. You reserve black for funerals and listening to Dashboard Confessional alone at home in the dark. No, you’d prefer your iPad to match freshly fallen snow. Sure, white shows dirt easier than black but guess what – life is messy. That’s what makes you better than them. You’re not afraid to be honest, and you’re certainly not afraid of this white iPad.

Samsung 46” 240Hz LED 3D TV

This giant 3D TV, or BFTV-9000 for you Duke Nukem fans, will appropriately dominate whichever room you deem worthy to house it. And lest it go unnoticed, this is also a Smart TV, with the ability to go online and stream movies, Pandora and more.

Nintendo 3DS with Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario 3D Land

Curious about Nintendo’s 3D handheld but never got around to taking the plunge? Or maybe you’ve always dreamed of Mario’s mustache reaching out and tickling your neck? Either way, your curiosity will be satiated with this flame red 3DS and two of the system’s highest rated games.

Aeron Chair

The Aeron chair didn’t end up in the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection just because it looks cool. Although it does. Its looks are only the beginning. Aeron accommodates both the sitter and the environment. It adapts naturally to virtually every body, and it’s 94% recyclable. Even if it’s black, it’s green.

“This was designed with the goal to have people say ‘I wanna sit on this… really bad’ and we’ve gotten that reaction. Then people sit on it we get a lot of ‘wow’s. When those two things come together, you know you’ve got something.” -Bill Stumpf, Aeron designer

Apple Thunderbolt Display 27” Monitor

For work or for play, everyone can use a bigger monitor. This 27 inch model by Apple also manages to pack in some extra whiz-bang features like LED backlighting, a FaceTime HD camera, 3 USB 2.0 ports and more.

Nerf Arsenal

Tired of sitting on the sidelines during one of the innumerable office Ner(d)f wars? Envision yourself as a Nerf Rambo? Then this prize package is for you. Prize package includes: N-Strike Stampede, N-Strike Longstrike, N-Strike Jolt, N-Strike tactical vest, Dart ammo box w/ 100 micro sonic darts, Vortex Nitron, Vortex Proton and Vortex ammo refill.

Canon EOS Rebel T3i

A feature-rich camera, the Canon T3i has an exceptional 18mp sensor and great low-light performance. It also features an HD movie mode, live view, several creative modes and is light weight with a long battery life. Features include: 18.0 MP CMOS sensor and DIGIC 4 Image Processor for high image quality and speed and ISO 100 – 6400 for shooting from bright to dim light.

LEGO Star Wars Motorized AT-AT and Imperial Shuttle

Find yourself bored on the weekends with nothing to do? Then LEGO Star Wars package with a combined 3,600 pieces may be for you. And yes, the AT-AT really walks and moves. Just don’t tell your significant other that you slipped all of your tickets in on this and not the TV or iPad.

Kinect Star Wars Limited Edition Xbox 360

You may have noticed this prize isn’t actually here. Well, that’s because it’s on pre-order scheduled to arrive at The Nerdery on April 3 and we’ll promptly ship it to its rightful new home – yours. Trust us, we’re good for it. This 320GB Xbox 360 comes in a custom R2-D2 theme with a C-3PO inspired golden controller, a white Kinect sensor, and the upcoming Kinect Star Wars game and Kinect Adventures.

Restaurant Gift Card Prize Package

What other prize allows you to gorge on delicious food at Twin Cities eateries? None of em’. This prize package, generously donated by restaurants CRAVE, Sopranos and Urban Eatery, contains a $100 gift card to each restaurant.

Apple TV (3rd Generation) and $250 iTunes Gift Card

Cuz Google and Microsoft just don’t get it. But you’ll get sweet 1080p high definition media with Apple’s most recent iteration of their digital media receiver. Apple TV plays content from iTunes, Netflix, YouTube and with AirPlay, it connects content from your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. Oh yeah, and then there’s the $250 iTunes gift card, perfect for absorbing the cost of downloading the perfect soundtrack to your upcoming 80s party. Radical.

Marble Chess Set, 3-Tier Chess Set, Travel Chess Set and Timer

Seriously, is there such a thing as too much chess? Well, you’d better hope not if you win this prize package. Use the Strato 3D set to impress your nerdy friends… and then frantically shove it in the cupboard and replace it with the beautiful marble set when your in-laws make an unexpected appearance. After all, studies have shown that a marble chess set increases the classiness of a room by a factor of two. And should you yearn for more Budapest Gambits and Dutch Defenses, you’ll have the handy-dandy travel set, too. 2000, here you come!

Overnight Website Challenge on WCCO News Radio

This morning Mark was on WCCO News Radio talking about this year’s webchallenge and some of things you can except Saturday. If you missed it you can listen to it and hear Mark say “nerd is the new cool.”

The challenge of choosing nonprofits and nerds

Several nerds and nonprofits are about to find out they’ve been selected for the 2012 Twin Cities Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge, and they’ll be stoked. Most of the volunteers know from experience what they’re getting themselves into while the nonprofits are complete newbs who’ll also soon learn what to expect when expecting nerds.

The fine facilities we rent at the U of M for this shindig will somewhat comfortably accommodate 18 teams and their designated nonprofits, meaning several well-meaning, completely qualified teams of volunteer web pros and all-too-many needy nonprofit organizations will be disappointed.  We’ll keep doing this, so please keep trying – maybe we’ll get the Metrodome or some other bigger tent next time around.

The envelope, please …

The nonprofits are:

• ANSWER (Aspergers Network Support for Well-being Education and Research)
• A Rotta Love Plus
• Bakken Museum
• Cancer Legal Line
• Career Solutions Inc.
• Center for Homicide Research
• Community Neighborhood Housing Services
• Franconia Sculpture Park
• HourCar
• Little Voyageurs Montessori School
• Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless
• Minnesota Environmental Partnership
• Metro CISM Team
• North Star Therapy Animals
• TVbyGIRLS
• The Valley Friendship Club
• West African Medical Missions
• The Windmill Project

Volunteer teams are:

• Codex
• Drop Shadows Not Bombs
• Drupal Rocks!
• Full Court WordPress
• Get Off My LAN
• Push & Run
• PHP Nerds BETA
• The Return of Team Redundancy Team Part 2
• Rexacoricofallapatorius
• The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksman
• Ruby Off Rails
• Ruby.MN
• Run PHP
• Sleep-Deprivation Research Team #4
• Team BIOS
• Team Pegacorn
• Twin Cities EE
• Two Unicorns, One Moon

Huge thanks to the judges who helped sellect the nonprofits:

• Christine Durand, communication director, Minnesota Council of Nonprofits
• Christian Erickson, principal, Zeus Jones
• Jamey Erickson, founder and creative director, Sevnthsin
• Dana Nelson, executive director, GiveMN.org

More at http://tc2012.overnightwebsitechallenge.com/ and http://nerdery.com/news.

Mark talks about the Webchallenge on KARE-11

If you weren’t up an at ‘em by 9 a.m. Saturday and you happened to miss Mark on KARE-11 there’s no need to fear. We got your hook up right here. Also, on a related note, the application deadline for this year’s Overnight Website Challenge is February 27, which means you only have seven days left to sign up.

TECHdotMN talks with Nerds & Nonprofits about upcoming Webchallenge

Nerds Mark and Eric along with Jan Hansen from Educate Tanzania sat down with the folks at TECHdotMN to talk about the Overnight Website Challenge.

In this short video Mark covers the history of the Webchallenge, Eric offers advice to web pros looking to participate, and Jan Hansen discusses the impact the new webchallenge-created website has had on her organization. Take a look.

Also, just a reminder, the application deadline for nonprofits & web pros is February 27th. Sign up today!

Apply yourself: Overnight Website Challenge returns March 24-25

Fellow Nerds and eager nonprofits have been asking, “When will registration be open for the Twin Cities’ 2012 Nerdery Overnight Overnight Website Challenge?” How about right now? Here.

As Luke Bucklin said in 2008 when we announced the second comingof our nonprofit nerdathon, “We are committed to this event as long as there are good nonprofits whose websites could be better, powered by nerds.”

That blanket-statement of commitment crossed state lines last summer at Chicago’s inaugural Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge, and March 24-25 will mark our fifth Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge in the Twin Cities. In the first five years of these nerdy deeds done dirt cheap, volunteers from The Nerdery and the interactive community at-large have donated about $2 million worth of professional services to 66 nonprofits. We’ll continue to consider this just a good start. Get started at http://tc2012.overnightwebsitechallenge.com.

For more the nitty-gritty lowdown and more information about this year’s event. Head on over to our News section.

A+ Team wins Chicago’s 1st Overnight Website Challenge

Several pounds of Peace Coffee and a hard day’s night later, the winner of The Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge is A+ Team for its nerdy deeds done pro bono for Southwest Chicago PADS.

Down two ill-stricken nerds just before Challenge weekend, A+ Team captain Chris Wilkinson pinged The Nerdery to assist in finding qualified replacements. Jason Crocker, who’d asked to fly stand-by should such an opportunity knock, promptly drove in from Cleveland to contribute to the winning effort.

Rounding out the Final Four of development teams and their respective nonprofits:

• Cloudbot (and Friends), serving Midwest Young Artists
• Drop Shadows Not Bombs, serving Crossroads Adoption Services
• Drupal Rocks, serving A Safe Haven Foundation

Honorably mentioned runners-up/co-winners:

• Awesome Dolphins and Friends, serving Near Northwest Arts Council
• Chamois Butter for Lunch, serving Peace Care
• Chicago on Rails, serving Kids Have Hope
• Greater Pixel Consortium, serving Institutio Del Progresso Latino
• Nerdery Bigfoot Research Consortium, serving Hemophilia Foundation of Illinois
• Team 13, serving Northwestern Settlement

Comprised of leaders from Chicago’s nonprofit and interactive communities, this independent panel of judges performed the double-duty of assessing applications of eligible nonprofits and judging the work of development teams during the last few hours of the 24-hour all-nighter:

• Melanie Adcock, tech blogger
• Joshua Brown, program manager, Taproot Foundation
• Randy Dill, founder and CEO, Chicago Non-Profit
• Cynthia Putnam, professor, College of Computing & Digital Media at DePaul University

Huge thanks to all who were a part of Chicago’s first-ever Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge. We’ll be back. Big thanks also to event sponsors DePaul University – College of Computing and Digital Media, and to our hosts, Resolution Digital Studios. Our in-kind sponsors were indeed kind as well, and they are: Chipotle; Dominos; Ergotron; Groupon; Peace Coffee; ThinkGeek; XS Energy Drink.

Good night, and good luck.

Chicago Web Challenge: This is the end

After 24 hours, judges selected four finalists. All ten teams of volunteers have won the respect of their designated nonprofit. May the “best” team also win bragging rights as the winner of Chicago’s inaugural Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge.