Custom content management for the Maine HR Convention
May 25th, 2010
This year Pemaquid redesigned the site of the Maine HR Convention for long-time Client Law Publishers of Northern New England. The 15th annual event, held May 11-14, 2010 at the Samoset Resort in Rockport, Maine, had over 700 attendees and more than 150 HR Expo participants, making it one of the largest of its kind nationwide.
The Convention offers high quality education, creative events, and special camaraderie for Maine’s HR professionals. This year’s high-powered keynote speakers included former Maine governor Angus King and employee engagement expert Ryan Estis.
Over the years the Convention staff has relied more and more on Web-based information management to keep things organized as the event has grown. With the 2010 redesign Pemaquid developed or adjusted a number of custom content management solutions specifically designed to help keep things organized. Here are some of the site’s key features:
Custom e-commerce. The Convention uses a custom e-commerce app designed by Pemaquid. It allows an organization to register up to six people at a time and calculates their fee based on the number of days each registrant will attend, whether they are participating in the Convention Golf Tournament, and whether they are subscribers of other materials produced by Law Publishers. Registrants can elect to pay via credit card or be invoiced.
Custom event scheduling. With the new content management system we’ve rolled out, based on the Django framework, Pemaquid created a way for Convention staff to designate some of the items on the Events calendar as workshops. This in turn allowed us to offer additional services to registrants regarding their workshop selections.
Registrant profies. Each registrant was entered into the Content Manager, along with the dates they would be attending the conference. That enabled us to customize their user experience in a few important ways and gave Convention staff the ability to better manage registrants.
Workshop selection. Registrants were each given a username and password (which they could change) as part of their profile. This allowed them to log into a members-only workshop selection section of the site where they could choose the breakout sessions they wanted to attend. Registrants had the ability to change their selections at any time, and they could print out descriptions of each workshop they had selected for a “grab-and-go” itinerary.
Headcounts. Convention staff had access to a special page that tallied up the number of registrants who had selected each workshop, allowing them to plan room assignments based on the level of interest.
Resource library. Pemaquid designed a custom resource library which allowed Convention staff to upload Powerpoint presentations, PDFs and other materials to a password-protected section of the site where registrants can log in and download them. Resources are organized by category.
Powered by Django. With this year’s redesign, Pemaquid developed a powerful custom Content Manager built atop the Django framework. In addition to the special features outlined above, Convention staff can update the copy on any page of the site, and they can create new ones, assigning the URL for search engine optimization (“www.mainehr.com/convention/my-human-resources-page”). The Django framework, which is Open Source, enabled Pemaquid to very quickly adjust and create new content management tools for the Convention site tailored to their specific needs.
