The final four

After three long weeks of waiting, the tenders came flooding in. We had an amazing response – 37 white hot digital agencies submitted a proposal for redesigning the Nesta site. Me and Sara spent the weekend, Monday and Tuesday whittling them down to a shortlist of 4. Now we’re heading into interview territory, so I can’t say any more until we’ve finished and chosen our 1 supplier. I’ll let you know…

In the meantime I’ve been keeping Nesta in the loop as much as possible about what’s happening. A common mistake I’ve found on these kind of projects is disappearing into your own little world, and forgetting about your main sponsor – the organisation you’re in.

So with that in mind I presented a high level view of the project so far – why we’re doing it, what it’s trying to achieve, and a glimpse of the sunlit uplands where they will all be able to publish to the site.

If you’ve got a spare 5 minutes, have a flick through – it’s without notes, so it’ll be a bit like listening to a silent movie:

Website presentation Nov 2012

One of the main ideas was borrowed from a really powerful talk given by a guy called Simon Sinek. In it he talks about getting the Why right before you start anything – whether that’s a small web project or a massive company rebrand.

Most organisations immediately get bogged down with the What and the How – and he used a comparison between Apple and Dell to drive home his point. Where Dell would talk about What they make (PCs), Apple would talk about Why they make them (we believe in beautiful design). Definintely worth checking out.