Lisa Ghisolf

Let’s face it: Website projects can no longer be defined by a boilerplate process. Evolving your website along with your organization can drive participation among all of your users: Staff, volunteers, donors, the board, and constituents. Driven by the buzzy “design thinking,” we can use a more nuanced approach that thinks of your end user first, and powers far-reaching results for your website projects. So how do you bring design thinking into your organization? From leading brainstorming meetings that are actually useful, to getting real-world feedback and buy-in from IT and other stakeholders, we’ll review common and uncommon methods and their outcomes.

I’ll share my step-by-step process (honed since the days of just HTML) for WordPress website creation or redesign. We’ll touch on content generation, design ideation and theme selection (or should you go custom?), functionality and plugin search, launch checklists, and post-launch care. Also freelancer or client management.

Freelancing is not easy, but it’s a great career path that can offer a lot of options for your design career. I’ll explore what I’ve done over the last 19 years to grow my freelance business, what I’ve done wrong, and the lessons learned. I’ll cover: • How to get business without cold calling • Why social media works – and sometimes doesn’t. • How to get (lousy) clients • How to be a lousy freelancer • How to be a good freelancer • Contracts • Discussing money • Getting paid