The Overnight Website Challenge was a week ago and I still feel like I’m catching up on sleep. It was a long day, but short at the same time. A ton of work was completed and we built a sweet site for a great non-profit.

It all kicked off at 9am as that’s when we got our non profits name and started the planning. What you often don’t realize is how much work needs to be done on a site before you start coding it. Brainstorming, planning, wire framing and designs takes time. There are a lot of details that needed to get worked out before a development plan can be put into place and the coding started.

By the time you get things planned out, breaking out those tasks so that everyone knows what they’re doing and are being productive is kind of hard in this environment. There is so much to do that there can be quite a bit of confusion as well. It’s like an ever-changing puzzle and you know what your goal is, but how to get there is challenging.

Our team worked really well together and knocked out a really nice site. It’s not ready to go live just yet, but it’s impressive what we all accomplished in 24 hours. I think we could have done even more if we could have gotten a better plan upfront, but then again, hindsight is 20/20.

My day ended up being 30 hours if you count in travel time and setup/takedown time. It was a fun experience, but I’m not quite ready to do it again. I’m really looking forward to a relaxing weekend with the family this weekend.

It’s hard to tell someone who has never done this how to prepare or what to expect. Organization & communicate is huge. I think our team did a great job and I’m glad I got to be a part of The Overnight Website Challenge. It’s a fun experience and gives deserving non-profits an awesome new site.

I’m thinking volunteer for next year though. We’ll see. 🙂