Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages - Website by EBM

Just Recently John Drezek (advertising manager) of TexTESOL V wrote a report on his experience working with EBM Corp in the development of the TexTESOL V website.

Bouncing into the 21^st Century

By John Drezek

In the summer of 2007, a TexTESOL V subcommittee was formed to search for a web design firm to update our website. Dr. Ouellette, Mary Peacock, Diana Bustillos and I collected our thoughts and tried to envision the type of functionality that would serve us best while planning the 2008 State TESOL Conference slated for November 6-8, 2008. TexTESOL V had already procured the online registration and payment services of Acteva (http://www.acteva.com) which was a huge step in automating payments, simplifying the registration process for our members, increasing efficiency of handling membership data and reducing work demands placed on our all-volunteer staff. We hoped to find a web designer that could create a website that was attractive, professional, easy for TexTESOLers to navigate and equally effortless for board members to update and expand our service to the ESOL community. At first we contacted friends in the business to educate ourselves on what to ask for when requesting a proposal. We investigated what types of services were typical and which features might not be economically feasible. Once we created a list of needs, we began contacting local and national web development firms. Each of us was tasked with finding 5-10 companies. I found mine through Craigslist.com. The proposals came in with vast differences between the bottom lines ($1000 basic design to well over $25,000). While cost was certainly important, I believe the designs of previous websites and the personality of the EBM team won us over (http://www.ebm-corp.com). Wael Salama (President) was exceptionally professional and offered us many extras to secure our business, and Lindsay Stone (web designer) was confident, professional, knowledgeable. The EBM “superstar” team has always been quick to respond to questions, resolve our issues and willing to go the extra mile for our organization. For example, Lindsay researched and found a module for our website that would allow us to hold elections and also created the ability for us to Blog and generate forums to better inform and give our members an opportunity to express themselves. She also installed a module allowing us to sell conference memorabilia such as: T-shirts, bumper stickers and mugs. We may never use the latter feature, but it shows how hard EBM Corp is willing work to exceed our expectations. We are currently in test mode for our new and improved TexTESOL V website and hope to bring it live in the next few weeks. The address will be the same, so click on us http://www.textesolv.org and check us out. Please be patient as we work feverishly to update the content. We hope you find the website informative and fun. I have certainly learned a great deal in the last few months about the web design process. See you in November at the 2008 State Conference!