What I Do In My "Real" Life

As we started our new company, my partner David and I were fortunate to have as our very first client, the Jewish Community Center of St. Louis. While we had all the experience and a significant record of "have done" behind us, it was still risky to let two guys that had just hung out their own shingle, conduct a Discovery Conference and direct the redevelopment of the web site. Of course, it's no accident that David has an amazing relationship with the powers-that-be within the J network and when they wanted to do make their web presence more powerful, they turned to him.

Originally, they wanted a simple makeover of their web site, of course, we gave them much more. David and I have a basic tennet that putting lipstick on a pig doesn't make it less of a pig. While we haven't used that one at the J (for obvious reasons), we did take advantage of our knowledge and experience examing and building the link between technical and business processes to provide them with the foundation of an improved marketing and sales tool; their outreach via the web to their current and prospective members and the community at large.

As will always occur, there were some learnings and gotchas, in the end; my hope is that this is the start of a new way that the J will look at systems and tools. By examining the integrated link between people, systems and information it's extensively possible to eliminate the human-redundant elements. The goals is NOT to reduce head-count, to the contrary, the goal is to maintain and grow head-count and assure that the people are interacting in a positive and contributory manner to the target audience. The more automated systems become, the more freedom staf members have in impacting the end client, rather than managing the system.

Man, does that sound like sales-garble, sorry about that . . . David says it much better.

So, here's what the current J site looks like (yeah, I know, kind of looooong). The new http://www.jccstl.com is now LIVE and in addition to looking a lot better, if you become a member, you'll even better understand how the efficiencies of this new tool is helping the J serve their target audience and provide a richer Jewish experience for them.

As "Members of the Tribe", you betcha we're darned proud of our work and what's even better, we did some of our best thinking for our own family, if you will. It's always great when that can happen.

As always, email me, or comment, below.