We’re knocking on seven years of LIFE at Ideas in Motion Media. Since "the O.G." ValpoLife launching in March 2009, we’ve seen some hills and valleys but 2015 was definitely a year of growth for our Good News Network project.
As we’ve been running our annual Top 10’s - and by golly we’ve got a bunch of ‘em - it got me looking at the year that has passed and got me thinking of all the milestones we hit, passed, leapfrogged and crushed.
We ended 2014 in the midst of a hiring spree. We started the year bringing on the uber-talented Gina Cullen to be our graphic design maven. Right around then we also bolstered the editorial team in adding Steve Neville and Kyle Hovanec as Contributing Editors.
With those two on board, we shifted our editorial focus to not only create more unique content, but we also shifted how we handled events and stories. You’ll notice our event calendar - which is now free and open to all businesses, organizations, and people to fill up with whatever good events you’ve got going on - filling up quite quickly. Our tech team made a nice little tool that actually not only lets you add in all your own info (speeding up the process), but it also notifies you when your submitted event is live AND gives you the link. We’re good like that.
We also were recognized for a good number of awards throughout Northwest Indiana in 2015. As I wrote about back in April, it really takes our whole team to pitch in to do what we do. Writers gotta’ write. Photo people gotta’ photo. Tech people gotta’ tech. And we have more and more people coming on to our team every day. As of this writing, we have 27 students representing their high schools on staff throughout Northwest Indiana with our #1StudentNWI program. (It is sort of an internship/learning position where we pay students to write good news about their school, share their stories on social media, stay connected to their schools, etc). But did you even know there were 27 high schools in the region?
On the website side, it was also a huge jump for us when we revamped our Partner Profiles - the most frequent style of partnership we have with businesses in the region. In short it makes businesses’ storefronts on our site just a lot more usable, on any device, anywhere in the world and lets the news they - and we - are sharing really stand out on their behalf.
Speaking of, we jumped out of 2011 and finally redesigned our website! You may have noticed. Now everything is bright, shiny, and most importantly: mobile friendly. This was months, if not years, in the making and really made our content pop as our photos are now hugely visible, our stories are easier to read, and our partners even get a little bit more shine on the website.
After the road in front of the office finally was reconstructed toward the end of the year, we hosted a ribbon cutting with our five Chamber of Commerce partners to signify all of these changes (and we’re working with Steindler Signs to put a bow on all that - keep your eyes peeled). It was great to have a tweetup-style holiday gathering that brought in old team members and current partners and have a mini-reunion too.
Looking back, 2015 was a great year for the LIFE team and it just set the tone for things to come.
Looking forward, 2016 is going to be even better.