CEO Report: Steady Progress

Clive Roux, CEO

Q1 2011

Last year IDSA had the strongest year of results we’ve had in the past 10 years. The Society ended 2010 with all of our key performance indicators pointing up in a positive direction indicating a strong recovery from 2009. That is good news and benefits you, as a member, and the design profession. Now we need to repeat and improve that performance every year!

How are we doing at the end of Q1 2011?

 IDSA received a clean audit for 2010. We have seen strong growth in membership. Finances remain challenging but under control. IDEA 2011 hit a new record number of entries with similar high numbers for finalists making it through the first round of the jury process. Additionally, we are on track to make our attendance and sponsorship numbers for the Design Dialogue Conferences this spring.These conferences were formerly known as the District Conferences, but the name was changed to reflect our intention to link the issues discussed at these conferences to future international conferences. The conferences’ goal has not changed. They continue to provide an affordable gathering place for the profession to link students, educators and professionals.

Your newly elected 2011-2012 board met for the first time this past weekend. It was a good session that included a mix of important topics like on-going programs, the future role, development and scale of IDSA, as well as many other items on which consensus was reached and decisions were made.

The 2011 IDSA International Conference,"Community," is going to be fantastic! Conference Chair Tad Toulis and the activities co-ordinator Austen Angell were down in New Orleans, the city for the conference this past weekend scouting for interesting things to do. They came away with some amazing activities that you will not want to miss.

IDSA is off to a good start for 2011. Progress is steady, but not as fast as we would like it.

I would like to devote the rest of this update to the most pressing topic for IDSA: idsa.org

IDSA’s Website

The website remains IDSA’s most challenging priority, and we need some straight talk on this topic to ensure that everyone understands where we are with the development of the new website and to set realistic expectations.

IDSA was not in a financial position last year to invest in creating an out-of-the-box, new Web presence. However, remaining on the same essentially crippled site we had been on for 8 years was not an option for me either. We chose to make the big leap from an outdated content management system (CMS) to a new Web 2.0 CMS with added social networking capability. This was successfully implemented in June 2010. It has resolved a litany of lost content and broken links that among other problems contributed to a deteriorating Web presence for IDSA. After our beta launch we promised to continue to enhance the website on an on-going basis, and we’ve been doing that. Our internal development program has been continuously closing the gap between the beta launch level of functionality and the promised level. Since launch, we have made improvements every month through the remainder of last year.

Our progress has continued through Q1 of this year. Among the objectives and upgrades already accomplished are the following:

• Enabled streaming video content (relevant content creation)
• Developed full article views (design upgrade)
• Enabled member-only content (created membership value)
• Integrated the Google calendar into Drupal (met user expectation)
• Built templates for premium firms listing gallery (created membership value)
• Improved load time by 50 percent (improved user experience)
• Created roughly 300 new articles a month (relevant content creation)

Planned technical build activities for Q2-Q3 to improve user experience:

• Redesign Netforum membership page
• Single login scripts and connections between the Drupal CMS and the Netforum database
• Integration of Netforum functionality into Drupal pages
• Upgrade to the membership benefits landing pages

These issues which relate to the connections between the CMS and the Membership database on the back end are the amongst the most confusing and annoying issues for the membership. Solving them will take years due to budget constraints. With one important exception, over the past nine months, we have closed all the gaps that existed and are about two quarters away from having the functionality we need. That is a big milestone after eight years with no functionality improvements to the old site.

 Today we have a site that is functioning effectively to enable us to generate new content and to market to the membership and community effectively. We’ve been rewarded in seeing our traffic more than double to a level of about 1.2 million visits a year with over 4.8 million page views.

The integration of the Chapter and Section sites into the platform has numerous benefits for all, but it entails more time than we initially expected. So far there are 36 webmasters trained, of whom many are contributing to the new sites content. The Boston Chapter has taken the step to close its separate site and will be running on idsa.org only. When this integration is completed the efficiency realized and integration will ensure a better content sharing across the whole membership and to the entire design profession. On the downside, a number of Chapters’ pages on the website, are still out of date. We continue to work with all Chapters towards the goal of a single platform and integrated traffic and can only bring you updated relevant content at the pace at which we can convert the chapters to the new website. The sections are all integrated already.

Once we have completed the functionality upgrades, we will turn our attention to the information architecture, content strategy, usability and user experience aspects of the site and to addressing the front-end design elements that are not strong enough in the platform upgrade yet.

We are in the closing stages of the beta phase with one important block of work still to be completed. These are the activities listed above for Q2-Q3. The integration of the Netforum Database system will be challenging because of the nature of the parent company Netforum; however, it is this area that members find the most frustrating because it is not clear that one is moving between two software systems when one is trying to do transactions on the website. This challenge is difficult to remedy in part because it is a legacy system to which we are tied in with a long-term contract.

We are talking to a member company to support us on heuristic testing so that we can evaluate where we are with the beta site in preparation for upgrades to the information architecture and enhancements to the site design.

The reality is that while, we need a team working on the website, at present we are supporting this effort with a single headcount. This is the single factor impeding our ability to reach the level that the profession and membership expect of us. With one person, progress will be steady but slow until we can get more structural and dedicated support. The Board has agreed to a structural addition to support the site pending the financial support to get there.

We would appreciate you or your company’s support. Those who could contribute time and resources are invited and welcome to help us with the development of our Web presence. We need usability testers, information architects to support the implementation of recommendations, and we need a firm to work with us to implement a new cascading style sheet (CSS) once we agree on the needed changes. If you can provide both as part of a small support team that of course would be even better. IDSA’s staff needs the members’ skills to make the site what the members expect and want. We cannot achieve it alone.

If you feel that you don’t have the time or capacity to help us improve the website, but would like to support its continuous improvement, we would be more than happy to discuss how to make a donation in kind or to become a financial sponsor to get us there faster.

The Website will remain a priority for us for the foreseeable future.