Work by el studio communications

NAESP's member survey aligns website content with members' interests.

Keeping track of a worldwide association membership can be quite a challenge. Like many associations its size, NAESP uses an association management database to connect with its 30,000 members and affiliates. While the software works well for staff, it's never been self-service for members.

Worse, website activity and email statistics -- NAESP's main points of contact with members -- have been out of reach of the AMS database.

Until now. The association brought el-studio.com in to connect AMS functions to the association's web site, allowing members to keep their information up-to-date. We also built functionality that allows state affiliates to access current membership information.

On the content side, the new web-to-AMS capabilities have inspired NAESP to conduct their first membership survey online. Results are saved to the AMS, where they can be used to target both email and website content to interested members.

"The NetForum-Drupal integration allows us to be much more responsive to our members," says Ernest Lilley, NAESP's Director of Technology. "And our affiliates love the access we can now give them."

OOSKAnews publishes newsletters with original reporting of news about water supply and policy in the developing world.

For the past four years their reporters and editorial team have produced weekly email newsletters for industry leaders. It was time to move all of that content online where it could be searchable.

While OOSKAnews didn't want to destroy the value of their paid subscription newsletters, they did want to create an archive of historical content useful to the researchers and global organizations they serve. 

They brought el-studio.com in to build a database and to advise in online marketing of that content.

Our solution had several parts:

• Extract the text of nearly 16,000 articles from their PDF sources
• Import this content into Drupal and tag it, where it could be displayed on the web in a searchable form
• Design the presentation of all of this information, and redesign OOSKAnews' website
• Encourage sharing of specific stories through social networks, and discovery through search engines
• Implement content restrictions that provide full access to paying subscribers

The Case Foundation has released new research into the effectiveness of open grantmaking, from their Make It Your Own Awards experience.

As part of the Case Foundation's technical staff at that time, I had the privilege of figuring out how to put the MIYO competition software together.

Tally4.com is a web application that helps you put your Foursquare checkins to work.

Whether it's working out, eating local or volunteering, you're out-and-about for a purpose. Foursquare records these checkins -- it lets your friends know when you arrive, and can give you coupons. It's great for shopping, but what about for goals? 

That's where Tally4 comes in.  

Tell the app what you care about, and Tally4 shows your pertinent checkins. See at a glance when you've worked out, and when you, um, may have slacked.

Are your friends interested in the same stuff? Tally4 keeps score, so you can race them to your goals.

It's perfect for fitness, comparing restaurant notes or tracking club attendance.

Tally4 was conceived and built by el-studio.com, using the Foursquare API.

• Try Tally4 with your Foursquare login: http://tally4.com  

Aboutfoursquare.com's review sums it up: 

Tally4 is yet another interesting way to use foursquare’s checkin data.

Passive House DC.

Peabody Architects is among the first to design a Passive House -- a super energy-efficient house pioneered in Germany -- for construction in America.

To document the construction and explain what's revolutionary about a Passive House, the firm asked el-studio.com to help them put a project log online.

The blog format was perfect for this -- if it could be simple enough for the architect to post from onsite construction administration visits.

After evaluating several options, we choose Posterous. The service's email-to-post makes it straightforward for staff to document the construction with cell-phone camera and video. And simple cross-posting to Twitter and Facebook makes the blog play well with the firm's other social media initiatives.

The results: much more frequent content updates, and higher exposure.

David Peabody, the firm's owner, sums it up: "I was giving a presentation on the passive house to a group of realtors. They took one look at the blog, and thought it was the product of a PR firm. But it's just us -- it's so easy to post that we do it frequently. And that's a competitive edge."

The National Association of Elementary School Principals relies on NetForum software to manage its sixteen thousand members. While that software works well for membership management, the association was not as happy with their commercial content management software. It had been years since a redesign, and the association's web staff did not relish the cost or inflexibility of working with the existing CMS.

Because of its flexibility and extensibility, Drupal was a much better fit. And with Drupal's open-source price, NAESP stood to save on licensing costs.

They brought el-studio.com on as a Drupal guardian angel for the project, advising and training staff on the best way to implement Drupal. Our work included —

• Server configuration for hosting on Amazon's AWS cloud services 
• Integration of NetForum sign on and e-commerce with Drupal content 
• Panels implementation and training so that NAESP staff can assemble complex layouts on their own 
• Integration with Facebook like and Twitter's retweet 
• Configuration of organic groups for association committee work 
• Content migration 

Initial launch went quite quickly, with el-studio.com working iteratively with staff to bring more features online.

Website for CitizenGulf's National Day of Action.

Business Objective: Help Gulf Coast fishermen whose livelihood has been affected by the BP oil spill. Organize and promote a series of fundraisers across the nation (18 at last count). Enable volunteer organizers to do their own promotion.

Technical Challenges:

• support events in multiple cities nationwide, organized independently
• search engine visibility complicated by the temporary nature of the event
• plug into partner social media and blog presences, including http://gulfcoastbenefit.com
• collect and distribute funds to those in need in the gulf

Technical Solution:

We pulled together several online services for ticketing and social media into a single blog that project organizers could use to promote events, thank supporters and keep them apprised of progress.

A Posterous blog allows organizers and city leads to post updates online by email, with complete integration with Facebook, Twitter and individuals' social media presences.

EventBright handles ticketing for events, allowing individual city organizers to reach out to their supporters.

CitizenEffect.org provides online communities around the CitizenGulf projects, and moves the funds to Catholic Charities of New Orleans, who will distribute them to affected families.

Gear Up for Giving and Case Soup.

Business Objective: Drum up grassroots support for a future person-to-person fundraising competition. Encourage nonprofits to use social media for advocacy and fundraising purposes. Build social media capacity among nonprofits by hosting a series of videos with industry experts and audience Q&A.

Technical Challenges:

• Broadcast live video from a variety of locations, with uncertain network connectivity.
• Simplicity of video operation. Oftentimes the host interviewer operates the camera and video software.
• Accept feedback and questions from the live audience over a variety of channels.
• Drive traffic to additional social media resources on casefoundation.org.
• Package the videos for future use and reference by the community.
• Gather audience feedback to influence future sessions.

Technical Solution: Embed UStream's video and chat platform onsite at CaseFoundation.org. Monitor chat and Twitter for comments during the live sessions. Build out feedback forms in Drupal to gather audience response. An embedded Google calendar lets folks keep up with future shows.

Successes: Pilot Gear Up for Giving shows were so successful that the format continues as Case Soup, covering subjects beyond social media.

CrisisCommons.org.

Business Objective: An umbrella website for CrisisCommons.org to help the press and volunteers make sense of worldwide hackathons for Haiti earthquake relief.

Technical Challenges:

• Scaling to handle expected traffic from the press.
• Working with volunteers with a variety of Drupal experience – from none to pro.
• Deadline pressure from press short volunteer availability made this a one-day project.
• Bring in blog posts and Twitter streams from CrisisCamps worldwide.

Technical Solution: A Drupal installation to catalog projects and the wikis that support them. Built to scale on Amazon’s EC2 cloud servers. The community then followed up with expertise, stories, and video and other media. Not bad for one day’s work!

America's Giving Challenge.