Gatorworks | Baton Rouge Web Design & Development

11:20AM
I’m here at day 2 of BarCamp NOLA 2009 in the LaunchPad building. We’re in concept meetings to discuss a system that would recruit and mobilize volunteers for the Greater New Orleans public schools. We think we want a system that will showcase current volunteer efforts as well as help communicate how prospective volunteers can get involved. More updates to come!

11:30AM
The techies are in the LaunchPad conference room planning out the technical aspect of the project. Matt Tritico is jumping from the concept meetings to the technical meetings to try to keep an open dialogue between both groups. Our goal is to have a system by 4PM today. We’re thinking WordPress might be the technology to use.

11:40AM
Tritico just ordered pizza- will be here in an hour! Gatorworks will host the system.

11:55AM
Chris Schultz is heading up the concept meeting, and we’re going through our site architecture. Chris’ wife just walked in to join us! Here’s the temporary link for testing our system: http://www.gatortesting.net/schooldistrict/

12:10PM
The proposed domain name is nolaschoolvolunteers.org

12:25PM
The email address info@nolaschoolvolunteers.org has been set up. Our concept meeting will be meeting with the technical guys after lunch. Lunch should be here within the next 15-20 minutes I think. We’re going to purchase a WordPress theme to use.

12:40PM
We’re breaking for lunch right now. We’ll be back online in a bit!

1:00PM
We’re back at it- both the concept group and technical group is now coming together to discuss our ideas. We have 3 hours to code the system!

1:20PM
Chris Schultz just finished briefing the room on what our concept meeting discussed. Now Stanford Rosenthal is briefing the room on what the techies discussed in their meeting. I think the site architecture is pretty much finalized. We’re discussing specific WordPress plugins to use, etc.

Our goal is to thank the past and current volunteers of the NOLA public schools, report the latest happenings of volunteer projects in the schools, and help mobilize new volunteers for the NOLA public school system.

1:30PM
We’re getting ready to break out into teams again. We’re going to have different teams assigned to developing the various WP plugins we’ll need to achieve our goals. We’ll have copy writers working on gathering content. The energy is great in the room…people are stepping up and taking ownership of various pieces of the project.

2:10PM
The theme has been selected, and we’re getting ready to install on the server now. Thanks to Marc Juneau and Chris Schultz with the help on selecting the theme. We have several dev groups working on the WP plugins, and Andrew Larimer is going to work on modifying the design.

2:20PM
The theme is now installed and activated at http://www.nolaschoolvolunteers.org. We’re working on customizing the site according to the site map and architecture we’ve put together.

2:55PM
Things are coming together. We’re going to re-group in about 5 minutes to see what needs to happen during our final hour of development. I’m working on a press release that will communicate what we’ve done for our local community and help encourage technology professionals to join us for our next BarCamp. We are talking about planning a BarCamp in Baton Rouge in the Spring of 2010!

3:40PM
I just finished draft 1 of the press release, and I’m feeling pretty good about what was accomplished today. We have about 20 minutes or so left, and I think we’ll be in pretty good shape. Tung Ly has been documenting everything we’re doing so Troy Peloquin of the Recovery School District will be able to take this system moving forward and be able to update the content on a regular basis.

4:15PM
We have some guys working overtime over here at BarCampNOLA. However, the project is just about finished, and we just need to populate with content now. Check out http://www.nolaschoolvolunteers.org.

4:30PM
Ok, I’m going to go ahead and call it a day. We did it… we developed a website in ONE day in support of the New Orleans public school system. BarCampNOLA would not have been possible without our sponsors: Voodoo Ventures, LaunchPad, Humid Beings, Gatorworks, and Newstwit.com.

Today was truly inspiring.

This past weekend my coworker @davidlink and I drove 1,500 miles north of the Mason-Dixon line to a little town called Boston, MA. Why would we undertake such a ridiculous feat you ask? My response is: To attend An Event Apart, only one of the greatest web design and development conferences on the face of this glorious planet.

Arriving in our hotel on Sunday night was such a relief. We had just driven 26+ hours from Baton Rouge to Boston. The conference was worth it.

Monday we got to hear some excellent presenters like Jared Spool, Kristina Halvorson, Jeremy Keith, Dan Cederholm, and Jason Santa Maria among others. Tuesday we were privy to the presentations of Jeffrey Zeldman, Dan Mall, Simplescott, Heather Champ, and Andy Clarke. The knowledge flowed like a river. I would love to be able to share everything I learned but I’m afraid there’s just not enough space on the internet for that. (Heh, there actually may be.)
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Our bread and butter is designing websites; however, we have a great creative team that can handle the entire identity package for small to medium sized businesses. Our design services include logo design, printed materials such as business cards, letterhead, and even large format design (like billboards).

Below are a few of our happy logo design clients. Let us know what you think of our logos!

This is a logo designed for FanTheFire.com

This logo was designed for New Orleans tech company Make Buzz

The above logo is for Wage Hunter, a Baton Rouge start up.

This is the logo for the Southern Republican Leadership Conference to be held in New Orleans in 2010.

This logo was designed for The Gulf Coast Food & Fuel Expo held earlier this year.

Green Escapes is a local plant nursery and landscaping company.