Website in a Week : Jobless And Proud
February 19, 2009 at 9:51 am
An experience of how Irish people still have it in themselves to give. A reminder to all that while the Celtic Tiger might be over, our traditional generosity is still alive.
Background
David Jones lost his managerial position in a furniture factory. He was given one week’s notice and had his company car, laptop and mobile removed from him. In the immediate aftermath, he couldn’t find the information he needed. It seems this time the Interweb failed!
Returning home, unable to sleep, David sat down and wrote a book about his experiences. “Oh No I’ve Lost My Job What Am I Going To Do”. He wrote the book in 4 days and 4 nights.
Some days later, I heard David being interviewed on Newstalk. He mentioned that now he had the book written, he needed to find a publisher and get it up on the internet. I texted the show and said I could help. The next day I met with David and I gave myself the challenge that if he could write a book in 4 days and 4 nights, then I could create a website for him in the same time – and for free!
Tapping In Through Twitter
I blogged about it. Then I put a shout out on Twitter about it. Chopped up the project into its component parts and listed the skills we’d be needing.
- Web designer
- Book cover design
- Coder
- Blog skinner
- Hosting
- Photographer
- Podcaster
- PR people
Within 2 hours I had the team that I needed.
Everyone jumped on board and were really happy to give. Not only that but the offers kept coming!
- We had business coaches offer to coach David in finding a new job
- A media coach offered to prep him for TV and radio interviews
- He even had a super hairstylist offer to do hair and make-up for any TV appearances!
In a week when there was a lot of bad news about job losses in the Irish economy, in my little world there was nothing but abundance. Generosity of spirit. Sharing of talents.
Resultarama
The website went live on 17 February - and David went back on Newstalk to tell the nation! Exactly one week after he had been on before, he was now the owner of a brand spanking new site. There were 1,300 downloads of the book on the first day. Since then the numbers have reached 4,000. Clearly there are many people out there who need this information.
The site itself is rather impressive. It’s not just a rush job, but a very contemporary ‘one page website’ style. It’s got a blog that David has been trained up on and he regularly posts to it.
I found Twitter to be invaluable in terms of mobilising the message. My initial call for help was retweeted many times. The project team was located all over Ireland and in the US – we found 37signals’ Basecamp to be a great way of keeping everyone in touch and files/messages/tasks clearly communicated. I use Basecamp for everything, it is my most treasured business tool. More so than email!
As a 57 year old man who has worked all his life, David Jones could have thrown his hands in the air and proclaimed that the sky was falling in. He could have felt sorry for himself. But that is not what he did. He embraced everything that came his way. He went from one week of not knowing what a blog or a podcast was, to becoming a blogger and being part of a podcast! He took to media like a fish to water. A last minute request to appear on the TV3 lunchtime show saw him hop off the bus he was on, make his way to the studio, and sit with the Editor of the Evening Herald and other guests looking like he was born to it!
David is now pushing ahead with his idea to form a Job Seekers Union. Helping workers to help themselves. You can find out more here.
I am very interested to hear how people use the tools of the web to help themselves. The last recession in Ireland was in the 1980’s, so none of this greatness existed. If you have any stories of people using the web to help others and themselves, please let me know.
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