24-hour charity website challenge met
Jul 22 2010 by John Hill, The Journal
AT midday last Thursday, 36 web experts gathered at Newcastle's Inex building, many meeting each other for the first time.
By noon the following day, six charity websites from the region were completely overhauled, and the world’s supply of Red Bull had been slightly depleted.
The sole focus of attention for that 24-hour period was the first-time charity challenge Webdurance, devised by North East entrepreneurs Paul and David King.
The creators of business organising software 1DayLater wanted to set up a project which allowed businesses to network while providing functional sites for charities which might have an outdated or non-existent web presence.
Paul King said: “Many charities are, for the most part, managed by very passionate and exceptional people who are often non-technical. By developing websites which can be easily be managed after the event we hope to extend their lifespan and give charities more control over the message they put out.”
The charities involved in the first Webdurance were Whoops! Child Safety, Children North East, Key Enterprises, Azure Charitable Enterprises, Meadow Well Connected and Tynemouth Blind Welfare Society.
Some charities, such as the Tynemouth Blind Welfare Society had no web presence at all, while others required updating and re-modelling.
Brighten director Ryan Whitlie signed up after meeting the King brothers at networking event Super Mondays. He spent 24 hours handling design and development for the Azure project as part of a six-person team.
Azure provides services to disabled people throughout the North East, such as supported housing and employment, training and counselling.
Whitlie said the aim was to create a site that was fun and engaging for families, while businesslike for sponsors and supporters.
He said: “We changed the navigation of the site to make it more user-friendly. The charity provided us with some great images, so we put an image reel in there as well. We tried to keep the text to a minimum, as it can be difficult for people who are hard-of-seeing if you have reams of text.
“It was also important to have a good content management system so they could make changes. We then walked though the site with two people from the charity.”
Webdurance was supported by Sunderland Software City and Codeworks, volunteers organisation VONNE and companies such as 1DayLater, Touchscape and Bond Solutions. The King Brothers hope to make it an annual event.
