Sierra Bravo’s contest strengthens ties to fellow Web developers
Upsize story by Beth Ewen
This year Sierra Bravo’s second annual Overnight Website Challenge paired a dozen 10-person teams of Web developers with 12 nonprofits that had been chosen by a panel of judges. In one 24hour period starting Feb. 28, each team over overhauled the site of its grateful organization.
Last year was the first time Sierra Bravo held the contest, which was the brainchild of its marketing director. “We learned from the nonprofits how little attention their Web presence gets, and how much they need it,” says President Luke Bucklin. What surprised him is how much the Web developers like the contest as well.
“We started the event as an idea to get more engaged in the Web development community. We’ve doubled in size in a year, and we wanted to get to know more people and also do something good for the community,” he says.
“I was surprised how many Web developers wanted to join in,” he says. 40 developers from Sierra Bravo were there this year along with a team from the agency Colle+McVoy and many others. “As a programmer, it’s hard to take your skill and donate it to the community, because it has to be done in a team.”
Sierra Bravo had 40 employees at the beginning of 2008, and now has about 85. “Our revenues have been growing 50 percent year over year. That’s what we’re planning for 2009. We’re fortunate in that the largest part is in interactive, and interactive advertising is the only one that’s expected to grow in ’09.” Revenue in 2008 was $6.5 million.
Bucklin says the contest offers 240 hours of programming. “They’re capable of putting together a lot in that time,” he says.
“It’s neat. Everyone enjoyed the opportunity to do something beyond their own little world,” he says. They spread the word through social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and among clients. “We were pinging out through the user groups.” They spread the word to nonprofits through the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits.
Bucklin and his two partners started the company 5 ½ years ago. “It’s been an absolute joy,” he says. “We started out in a very different place from where we are now,” he says, in so-called legacy system integration working with program such as COBOL and Fortran.
“So we would build Web sites to integrate into systems that were 20 to 30 years old. Then we started getting tapped on the shoulders by design agencies,” which would bring in Sierra Bravo to add interactivity to their clients’ Web sites. “We started being more purposeful of going after that business and it started to take off.”
Was Bucklin one of the volunteer programmers in this year’s Sierra Bravo Overnight Website Challenge? “I was a cheerleader,” he says with a laugh. “I’m an old legacy programmer. I’m useless when you put me in front of Web code.”
