True North pgs Launches New Web Site!

After months of design and development work, I am very pleased to announce the launching of True North's new web site. The URL stays the same, www.projectcommunity.com, but the focus tightens. Special thanks to Wilder Schmaltz for the icon design. Thanks to Morgan Everett of Incommand Interactive for the site design and for tolerating my shifting requirements.

How does a new web site come into being? Here's the story behind ours.

Last summer, I attended my 30th high school reunion in Walla Walla, Washington. I was hesitant to attend, since I had lost touch with every one from my class. I was most interested to reconnect with my best friends, though, particularly "Jake", who had disappeared off my radar screen over twenty years before.

I was standing on the porch of the golf club where we were holding the reunion when this spitting image of my old best friend appeared with a thin, blond woman on his arm. Jonathon Craig, "Jake", and his wife Diane arrived quietly. I approached, introduced, we embraced.

I learned later that night that Jonathon and Diane ran a computer store and web design company in Yakima, Washington. I mentioned my interest in transforming my content-intensive site into something more aesthetically pleasing. We agreed to meet the next Monday in their offices in Yakima.

Incommand Interactive is housed in an old fruit warehouse, which is located in a neighborhood of old fruit warehouses. Ancient wooden floors, an antique scale, which Jonathon told me weighed tons, too huge to move, was incorporated into a display on the sales floor. People milled around while technicians poked and prodded disemboweled boxes. The place buzzed. Diane gave us the tour. There's a worm farm in the basement and a state-of-the-art web design operation on the second floor.

Diane introduced us to Morgan, her web design project manager. Morgan's enthusiastic and his enthusiasm is infectious. I show my present site and learn that it looks much different on their Windows monitor than on my Powerbook display. I had just recolored all the backgrounds to be the most congruent palette ever- only to learn that none of the colors displayed true to my intentions. My site looked like something really ugly had died on it. This was my first opportunity to see my site as others saw it- and there could have been no better sales pitch. I wanted to flee to some quiet corner and change my site back to a default palette, which I did as soon as I returned to my office.

After returning to the office, I sat down with my son, Wilder, who does the graphics for the Compass Newsletter, to discuss the icons for the new site. We had decided that we would have seven or fewer "sections" to the site, and I wanted some consistent theme across the pages. We quickly decided upon a nautical theme, playing off the Compass Rose icon that has been with True North since day one. The other icons (see below) were proposed that day, with one exception. We originally proposed a figurehead icon for the "Who We Are" page. We tried several forms of that and none "worked." We decided on the pirate flag later, adopting it both because it worked better than any of the figurehead icons and because we liked the attitude it projected.

A few days later, Wilder and I drove to Yakima to visit with Morgan. I wanted to be sure we were on the same page and that the graphic specifications would be completely solid before I began to create the supporting content. Supporting content? I really considered the graphic design more important than the textual content because the text can be so easily changed- and will be frequently changed. But the graphic design is foundational, providing the context within which the whole site exists. Morgan had sent me a few sample page designs and we quickly at this meeting decided on the one you see today. Separate home page and "content" page designs. Color palette left mostly up to Morgan- I had already proven myself incompetent to choose the palette.

The rest we did long distance. Email mostly with the occasional phone call. The spotlight fell onto me as soon as we decided upon the graphic content. I was responsible for creating the text. We had started discussions with Jim Zahnizer of JZ and Associates in Lake Oswego earlier in the summer. His public relations advice would be incorporated into the content. We needed crisp descriptions and Morgan encouraged us to leave out whatever we had in doubt. I poked back to both Jim and Morgan, defaulting to over explaining almost everything. This was extraordinarily difficult work and, between doing the rest of my work, including extensive traveling, this took months to complete.

It seems like we have been in final, nearly completed mode for a couple of months. The refinements get subtler as the end product comes into focus. This experience has completely reinforced my understanding that projects get redefined at least once during development and that how they will be redefined cannot be defined initially. We were attending the Satir Year Long Workshop in North Carolina during this period and began a series of discussions centered around how her work applied to our work. Some of the content emerged from these night-long discussions between Amy and I back there. Particularly the Frequently Questioned Answers section, which some of our advisors rejected as indecipherable in early drafts, could not have been predicted as part of the site initially - they had to emerge.

Building anything teaches the builder about himself. This project has been no exception. Nothing is a simple, straightforward problem except to the naive. The experienced always anticipate difficulty. I am more experienced now. My idea that we should have all back issues of the newsletter available for download made huge work for me because not all of the back issues could be distilled into Acrobat files without massive changes. I got to reedit half of the back issues. My own distractions complicated my contributions considerably.

Tips for Those Who Think They Want to Build a New Web Site:

1. Chose partners who can tolerate you at your worst. Morgan must have gone home shaking his head (or fist) several nights after receiving my latest picky missive. I didn't notice him losing his cool much.
2. Expect everything to change once if you know exactly what you want to start and more times than that if you don't. 
3. (I broke this rule) Build it in tiny increments. Start with the smallest imaginable portion and build incrementally from there. 
4. Get the graphic design down first before you worry about any content. The form does not follow content, let the form provide meaningful context for the content instead.
5. There is, as with most things, a huge difference between wanting to have built a web site and having built one. Patience.
6. Have advisors but don't always take their advice. Your judgment will either be good or bad, but you cannot abrogate your judgment to anyone else. Final say had better stay right here. This doesn't mean that you get to be despotic, just decisive. Follow your guts regardless.
7. Leave it out if there's any doubt. I know that my "surfers" deserve to have everything, but they won't look at it all. I compromised by providing a deep repository for my "Deep Thoughts" and some prospective clients will dive there. Most won't. I've over-engineered.
8. Plan for changing it often. I can load my own new editions of my newsletter and I expect to change the site content in some meaningful way every month. The relationship's not over when the initial construction's done.



Here's my list of appreciations for this project:
Thanks to Morgan Everett and Diane and Jonathon Craig of Incommand Interactive for being so easy to work with!
Thanks to Amy Schwab for poking, editing, and engaging in aimless, meaningful dialogue!
Thanks to Wilder Schmaltz for the terrific graphics!
Thanks to Kathy Carey for the text editing.
Thanks to Derry Kabcenell, Bill Warner, and Jerry Weinberg for advising!
Thanks to Jim Zahnizer for helping to dumb down me and the site!
Thanks to Ward Cunningham for the Heretic's Forum engine!

Most sincerely.
David A. Schmaltz, President
True North project guidance strategies, Inc.
Portland, OR

We've divided who we are and what we do into six handy parts, each with their own icon.

Background to all the icons is the Compass Rose. This has long been the trademark for True North and it is the icon representing our home page. From here you can navigate to any point in our site.

Pirate Flag: This describes who we are. Our PR advisor, Jim Zahnizer, said, "Ditch the Jolly Roger." We didn't! Real pirates flew this flag only at the last moment before attacking. Because we're flying it all the time, we must not be pirates.

Barrel in a Cargo Net: This is where we describe our products. I particularly like the description of our Brief Consulting services.

Ship's Wheel: This is where we pose our five most Frequently Questioned Answers (FQA). Most web sites have a FAQ frequently asked questions section. Our experience tells us that it's our ability to question our answers that most defines our success.

Inkwell and Quill: This is our new download site for our acclaimed newsletter, Compass. We have both screen and print-optimized .pdf copies of every issue available for downloading here. Help yourself. Subscribe. No more messy email attachments for distributing Compass by email- we'll just ship you the URL to the latest issue and you can grab it when your queue's ready for it!

Cup of Coffee: This is our community space. Find links here to members of our community. Also link into our new Heretic's Forum, which I outline below.

Diving Helmet: This is where we moved the contents of our old Rant Space. We call these our thoughts. We store them here, at the bottom of the web site so that those who don't want to delve into the deeper philosophical details won't have to. (This was advice we took from Jim, our PR advisor.)

Heretics' Forum

Back in the middle ages, those who made up their own minds were declared "heretics." Do you ever feel misunderstood because of the differences between what was supposed to be and your actual experience? If so, you have had a taste of what it was like for the heretic. Welcome, fellow heretic, this is a safe place to discuss your experiences.

I created the Heretics' Forum for those of us who need reassurance that we are not crazy. The world is different than they told us it would be, and different in surprising ways. The Heretics' Forum is a place to share your stories and to access others' stories of our crazy-making experiences.

david schmaltz (ChiefHeretic)
2/15/00

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