Maryrose Lyons blogging since 2003...

Website in a Week : Day 1

February 11, 2009 at 3:07 pm

Early yesterday morning, while wiping the sleep from my eyes, I heard an item on the Breakfast Show on Newstalk that grabbed my attention. They had a guy on called David Jones. David was laid off from his job as Manager of a Furniture Factory a couple of weeks ago. He was given one week’s pay and told ’see ya’. That night, when he couldn’t sleep, David got up and started to write. Four days and four nights later, he had written a 15,000 word book. Newstalk hooked him up with a publisher and he mentioned that he was going to set up a website to distribute this book.

That’s where I came in.

I knew I could help him. And in those early foggy hours of the morning, my head was hatching a plan – if he can write a book in a week, then we can deliver a website in a week!

And that’s what we’re going to do.

Pulling in the talents and generosity of some people I know, we’re going to deliver an ecommerce-enabled website that David can use to promote his book next week when he’s back on air.

I’m going to blog the progress of the site right here, so if you want to tune in to a Good News Story of people helping people, then stay posted.

Day 1 : Planning

Met with David in Dunshaughlin.  They took his company car so I drove to him.  Received my own copy of the manuscript of the book.  Have had a quick read and am impressed.  It’s a good buy.  Discussed the steps of how to get the site up and running – in double quick time.

Got on the phone to Cillian Fennell to pick his brains re. suitable news outlets to get the story into.  On the spot, he gave us free advice.  Follow up calls are being made right now.

Back to Brightspark HQ, all the while mulling over the most suitable web designer to invite to join us.  The newly available for work Rachel Earley came to mind.  Up to quite recently she has been looking after Blastspace, so I knew I could rely on her to come up with the right type of non-corporate irreverant but cool design.   One telephone call later, she’s on board.  We’re meeting to discuss design ideas later.

I use Gordon Murray in Cork for all of my paypal related work.   A shout-out on Twitter to find him, followed by a quick call, and he’s in too.  Gordon’s going to integrate paypal, install the Wordpress blog, and take care of the podcast too.  So now we’re a national team spanning Dublin to Cork.

What We Need Now

• Graphic Designer for the book cover Davy Mac Graphic Designer
• Podcaster to record a short intro by David – he’s got a great voice, so it would be a shame to not use it Alex Gibson Award Winning Podcaster
• Photographer to take a shot of David for use on the site and in publicity material David Duigan has kindly offered.
  
• Hosting Digiweb are providing free hosting.

If you are skilled in any of these areas, please let me know.  You will be guaranteed link love from the site and a panel to promote your business.  You’ll get big upped on here, and hopefully if some other bloggers take up this story?   You will be name-checked in the promotional material that’s going out to press, TV and radio.    Most of all, you’ll score brilliant karma.

UPDATE: 1 hour 45 mins after posting this, and we have graphic designer and podcaster!  Thanks Alex and David.

Read on to see what happened on day 2…

Posted in Business Culture Ireland, Zeitgeist | 14 Comments

Tags: Website in a Week