|
Situation
The Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie and his campaign needed an interactive central social hub and content management system (CMS) for their campaign leaders to post up to the minute information about the campaign that the general public could read and understand what was going on in the campaign race. The leaders also needed a way for the general public to quickly and easily submit their written and video feedback/comments about issues that where important to them. The site needed to blend together YouTube, Twitter, facebook, text, video, audio, photos and more from social media streams, the system needed to be developed quickly! Our project timeline ended up being less than one week.
Challenges
-
Turnaround time; A quick turnaround time for this project was critical, we needed a well planed and focused strategy for deploying this project, and this starts with solid foundation to build atop.
-
A solid foundation; We chose Joomla! V1.5 for this foundation as it's a very fixable and stable platform to build atop, would could quickly and easily design and develop the entire system in a matter of days instead of weeks or months unheard of in the previous years.
-
The right technology; Choosing the right technology can something tricky selecting the wrong tools for the job is like having an elephant on your back, crushing the development process. We ended up grabbing the tools that we use for our own site that we knew we could deploy quickly some of these include, Joomla!, Twitter, YouTube, facebook, and Slideshow Pro to name a few.
Actions
-
A focused plan; A well orchestrated plan is critical with this many people involved in the project all at once, there are so many things going on all at once, each member of the team whether they be working under our roof or one of the many developers, graphic designers, content writers, proof readers, campaign leaders ext. ext. it's vital that everyone is on the same page at the same time.
"It may look very chaotic to anyone not used to these types of projects but I assure you it's a very orchestrated machine of like minded creative thinkers all working together"
Christophor S. Wilson
director of web development and founder of C.S. Wilson & Associates™
-
Designing and developing; Everyone's favorite part of the whole process, seeing all of our hard work quickly coming together, this is also the time that the client starts to see the most progress.
-
Testing and retesting; Probably everyone's least favorite part of the process but a critical one that cannot be overlooked, making sure that the systems will work on all of the latest browsers and mobile devices.
-
The unveiling; All systems are a go, our client sit with their fingers crossed as we flip the imaginary switch taking the site live for the first time. This is a real tipping point for the campaign, now all of the content writers, and campaign leaders get their chance to take the keys to their shiny new CMS and start publishing content.
End Result
At 10 pm on November 3, 2009 Christie, became the first Republican in 12 years to win a statewide contest in heavily Democratic New Jersey. With 90 percent of precincts reporting, Christie had 49 percent of the vote, compared with 45 percent over Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine.
Client Testimonial
"We contracted Chris Wilson with C.S. Wilson and Associates™ to help the Chris Christie campaign build the most robust, user friendly, and effective web presence (christiefornj.com) in the race for New Jersey Governor. Not only did we succeed, but with Chris's help we blew away our competition on almost every front.
Chris took the time to understand what our campaign's needs were and he effectively employed the latest technology to get it done in a timely manner. Despite being vastly outspent by our opponents on every front, our website was smarter, faster, and more effective and quickly became a core part of our strategy to deliver our message to voters.
Working closely with Chris, we also created ItsMyNJ.com, a cutting edge implementation of the highest-used micro-blogging services, with the ultimate goal of giving New Jerseyans and the issues they care about a voice in the election process.
Despite the demanding schedule of a campaign, Chris was friendly, responsive and highly competent. I would recommend C.S. Wilson and Associates™ to any organization that needs a mission critical web presence at the best price"
Ricky Diaz
Chris Christie eCampaign Director
|
