Building a Website at 36,000 Feet

A few weeks ago, WorkSite had an interesting experience. We helped our client build a website while they flew around the world at 36,000 feet. Our client, Noah, was flying from Paris to Vancouver for an annual conference – CIES 2016. Noah was responsible for creating the website for next year’s conference – CIES 2017. His hope was to have a live site by the time he landed and this year’s conference started.

It wasn’t quite building a plane while flying in it, but it reminded me of it.

Prior to the flight, we had set up the new site and created placeholders for pages but the site was nowhere near ready for public consumption. That was the setting as WorkSite sat down to work one Friday morning. In our Inbox was an email from Noah. He was on the plane and adding content during the flight. The email contained a checklist of questions and issues. We tried to address the items as quickly as possible. This kicked off a series of emails back-and-forth. Noah would add text to pages. WorkSite would address layout and navigational issues and update the header and footer.

With each round of emails, the site took form until Noah announced his laptop battery was running out. We figured it would be a several hour delay before the next email. We were surprised a few minutes later to see an email. Noah had pulled out his tablet and found the WordPress interface pretty easy to use. We could continue to work – Noah somewhere over Canada, WorkSite sitting in our Chicago office. By the time Noah landed in Vancouver, the site was ready to go. We removed the security and CIES2017.org was launched!

It’s pretty amazing what you can accomplish with WordPress, a few hours of hard work, and airplane wifi.

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