New Adventures in Cyber World

I have always had interest in graphic design, marketing, advertising, and web design.  Yes I know, these are all very similar, but also very different areas of expertise.  Since graduating in 2004 with a B.A. in Journalism and Public Communications, with an emphasis in Public Relations and Advertising, I have had many opportunities to broaden my experience in any one of these fields.

Through working in the Alaska Tourism industry for several years, I had the privilege of practicing all of my skills through various media outlets.  Whether it was writing a press release for local media or designing an advertisement for an Alaska product in which we were providing, there was always an opportunity to ‘practice.’

Later, I accepted the position as the Executive Director for the local chamber of commerce and this opened a whole new world of challenges.  Working for a large corporation and then going to work for a non-profit organization is a challenging adjustment alone.  But I have to say, that I am thankful to have both perspectives under my belt.  It’s like night and day.  Two successful missions operating on two completely different business plans.

While working for the chamber of commerce, I was tasked with the redesign and relaunch of www.kenaichamber.org.  The original site was LONG overdue for an update.  It was far from being utilized to it’s full potential.  I quickly learned the importance of listening to your members on this project.  Whether your a member based organization or customer based business, this is key when redesigning a tool that your market is using as a resource to reach you and stay connected.  To make a long story short, I found a great web development company based in Alaska to work with.  Since we were a non-profit organization and on a very limited budget, I had no choice but to dig deep into the “How-To Manual” they provided me and do a lot of the site maintenance myself.  It was a great learning experience and I thoroughly enjoyed the work.

When we moved to Canada in April 2010, we were welcomed by the most wonderful person, Lynne Ring.  She was hired to show us around and help us transition and she became a very close friend in the end.  Her primary business is The Organizing Guru, a professional organizing business based in Central Alberta.  She has a great passion for organizing and has turned her passion into a business.

She presented me with the challenge of redesigning her website www.organizingguru.ca and after many discussions and a lot of consideration, I decided to venture into this project.  You see, she is an entrepreneur and a small business at that, so she didn’t want to spend $5,000 plus on a new website.  I knew I could give her the simplicity and visibility she was looking for online and I gave it a shot.

I’m pleased to say the site is complete and she seems very pleased with the end result.  I had so much fun working on this project and could really see myself doing this more frequently.  This project has inspired me to explore distant education programs in multimedia design and web development and I’m looking at going back to school in the fall.

I believe there are many more small business owners that don’t have the money for a flashy and expensive website and I would love to help.

So, stay tuned for more of my adventures in cyber world.