NYU Center for Spiritual Life
Post published in October, 2012
New York University was calling. It turned out to be the newly minted Center For Spiritual Life.
When I spoke to the co-director, a lively, amiable, and eminently likable Ms. Shy, I asked what they needed done. She answered with the now dreaded assertion, “We want a new website.”
This is perhaps a case study for why one should sometimes pick clients NOT on the basis of the size of their project, but on WHO they are personally. Are they good people?
These people were. So we did a proposal and got the job.
Fortunately, they were also very clear about what they wanted. The project brief—held in their beautiful and quiet new digs overlooking Washington Square Park—went smoothly.
Was there going to be a hitch? Could this all still dishevel into chaos?
The mood boards were quickly approved. The designs approved. The executives and the board all approved. The site was built, loaded and ready to launch on schedule.
The site was built, loaded and ready to launch on schedule.
Then it happened.
The site could not go live because it was outside the structure and content management framework of the institutional website run by the University.
I understand this. I’ve been on the other side of this question … a lot. If I were the creator and maintainer of the vast NYU network of websites, I would not necessarily want outsiders creating extraneous micro-sites, either. But it was done. Our clients loved it. It would have been sad to put the whole thing down at that point, to have it die an unceremonious death. (Not that this does not happen for much lesser reasons than this.)
But then … they relented, death sentence commuted.
The design could stay. The easy-to-use CMS allowing user control of nearly every aspect of the website could stay. The nifty, crazy main navigation could stay.
So it’s live. It’s well.
We wish you all well in fact … meditators, prayers, administrators, seekers.
You are great clients.
___
Postmortem (4/10/13): The site is no more. It had a good, if brief, life.
