The eTapestry Web Site Then and Now
Earlier this week we perused a sample of the outstanding work of our very own eTapestry Web Services team. Thanks for the kind comments about their work.
During the course of writing that post it made me think of our very first eTapestry web site and the immense amount of transformation it has gone through over the years.
I can still recall the brainstorming meeting Steve Rusche and I had with the senior class students from the Herron School of Art at IUPUI they were part of the early cadre of brand new web site designers combining the technical skills with their already honed artistic skills. Any and every possible name for our new product had been tossed around. Yes, we tried every trite phrase regarding the "web" or "the midwest" or "fundraising". You should all be glad the artistic students vetoed the many dubious names John Moore, Steve and I had offered. To this day, John still laments the lack of faith those students had in our creativity...
During the brainstorming session one of the graduate students insisted on both of us describing the product's proposed functions in detail. Thankfully we did, because when one of the students stated that we were weaving together a rich "tapestry" of functionality for the charity world. Immediatey, one of us placed the infamous small "e" in front of that very vivid word of tapestry to form the now famous moniker of eTapestry! (Part of the reason for the "e" was the fact that all of the URL’s for variations of tapestry were taken, but eTapestry was wide open!) I remember looking at Steve, smiling, and saying even we can make that name well known far and wide in our beloved sector...
The rest is history as the pundits say. eTapestry did become known far and wide even with the design of our first web site below. They say a picture is worth a thousand words and perhaps that is the case here.
All of us involved with starting the company took our turn at writing a "white paper" or two. Here are a couple of those original ones here and here. They also served as a bit of a product road map for us in those very early days. I must however, give credit to Steve for so much of the text in those first web sites. As John and Scott were coding, and I was selling, Steve was writing and arranging. (I truly miss all of the early pictures of our activities that we used to fill up the space and to illustrate we were a "fun" group to associate with. If you visit eTapestry you can see some of those adorning our walls. We are the slightly younger guys with the gleam in our eyes...)
Our web site has continued to evolve and thrive just like the rest of the organization over the years and because of our alignment with Blackbaud. We just keep getting bigger and hopefully better. Below is our current web site. To say the least it is so much richer in content and depth.
The site is still under the watchful eye of Steve with the help of our Web Services leader, Josh Esslinger. (Who together, to this day, deflects many of my crazy suggestions in such a kind manner that I actually feel good about not every seeing them come to fruition.) However, instead of those insightful graduate students we have our very own web services team. They are every bit as creative and certainly much more experienced than those students were back in the late nineties. Just walking by their desks and/or offices will clue you in on that. What is there for art and inspiration is certainly not what you would find in your average office environment. Here is a shot of the team below, I will give a clue, Josh is in the back row... Perhaps they will be helping you create a magnificent Internet outreach for your organization soon!
