Project Management and Web Site Planning - Lessons from the NTEN Conference

Michael Weiss had the pleasure of speaking about Project Management and Web site planning at the Non Profit Technology Conference in Washington DC. The following is what he had to say about his experience at the conference.

NTC is put on by the great folks at the Non Profit Technology Network. I have been a member of NTEN for quite some time, but for some reason I never attended the national conference. What was I thinking? This is by far the best conference I have ever attended.

The energy is high and every person there is passionate about using technology to help the greater good. It was an amazing thing to witness. I was involved in discussions about Drupal, the GetActive/Convio Merger, Kintera, budgets, planning and so many more. This year I was asked to speak with Rob Rose from CrownPeak about Web site planning.

We called our session Project Management For All (see our PowerPoint). With so many sessions focusing on new technologies such as Twitter, del.icio.us, Digg and other cool Web 2.0 thingamajigs I thought we would have a small group. I am happy to say that we packed the room and had people standing and sitting everywhere.

I have always known that very often clients do not always understand what goes into planning for a large Web site initiative. I speak on this subject all time. From the amount of time it takes to scope out a project to the actual budget needs, there is a lot of confusion and the need for clarification.

This was very obvious from the second we started the session. Questions ranged from "What is a wire frame?" to "How do I choose a vendor?" to "What is this all going to cost?" Needless to say, we took the entire 90 minutes and I believe helped demystify the process and the expectations for most of the people in the room.

I made many connections at the conference and in fact have received 3 RFPS since returning. So all in all it was a very successful trip and I look forward to NTC 2011 in DC.

--Michael