Case Study: Green Central Station
Overview:
The Green Central Station initiative was produced as a public clearinghouse of information for “everything green” in Howard County, MD and was managed by the Office of Environmental Sustainability. The Howard County Office of Environmental Sustainability aims to protect and enhance natural resources and the quality of life in our community through the conservation, preservation, and restoration of our land, air, and water, guided by the principles of science, ingenuity, sustainability, and stewardship. I worked with a partner ad agency in responding to the request for proposal and was awarded the contract to build the enterprise website.
Challenge:
“Everything green” in Howard County is a comprehensive category and with literally dozens of audiences in the community, touching not only the county department in charge of it, but also the various other organizations and constituents that would want to have input on what information is made available. The timeline was tight, giving us approximately four months to plan, design & develop the site with no existing content or direction. This was a very visible project with it being an essential initiative for the County Executive’s stance on environmental sustainability.
Solution:
I interviewed the various public and private stake-holders involved in the environmental sustainability community and built a site plan and architecture containing all of the information and content required by the various stake-holders. We acquired and produced copy, images and content from various sources, created an events calendar and built a green business directory from scratch. We delivered the project well within the 4-month window and launched on Earth Day. I then trained the Office of Environmental Sustainability staff and various other contributors on the various tasks associated with maintaining the website using the WordPress CMS and the various social media elements integrated with the website.
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The services that I provided consisted of:
- Site concept, architecture and navigation
- Interviewing stake-holders and constituents
- Copywriting - site content
- Website Design & Development
- Web / Interactive Project Management
- Training (Social Media, WordPress CMS)
"Green Central Station started as a complicated and fractured vision for an online clearinghouse/outreach tool for the County's environmental work. Dave took this vision and gave it structure. He was able to quickly filter through what was possible, what was not possible, and organize it into a comprehensive package that far exceeded our expectations. Green Central Station is now the model for the County in terms of how to organize a marketing/outreach website and how to best utilize interactive tools and social media and that is entirely to Dave's credit."
- Joshua Feldmark, Former Director of Environmental Sustainability, Howard County, MD