In our other lives, the Exchange Mom and Exchange Dad are an environmental lawyer and a consultant working on climate change issues. In the past couple of months, we’ve been busy creating new websites for our business . . . as a staff of two with no outside employees, we’re the definition of “small company,” and so no, we don’t have an IT department.
(If you’re interested in what we do when not advising host families and exchange students, check out The Climatographers and The Climate Web.)
As the designated “website manager,” I had the honor and misfortune of being the web designer for our new sites. How has that gone, you ask?
Let’s just say that we’re not taught this stuff in law school or in exchange student coordinator training! It’s definitely not my skill set. It’s been exhausting, but a good learning experience (I think …). I do know a lot more than I did before but not enough to call myself truly knowledgeable. I know enough to be dangerous and I worry all the time about breaking our websites.
Now, I’m trying to manage our official business websites as well as The Exchange Mom, and our next step is thinking about what changes we would like to make to this site, which is long due for some sprucing up. I hope to be able to turn to that soon.
What would YOU like to see? How can this site be more useful to you as a host parent, potential host parent, parent of an exchange student, or a student yourself? Please contact us with your thoughts, either by commenting below or sending us an email.
I would like to see people’s stories about hosting. You could have different contributors each month. The highs and lows, types of stuff they did together,etc. A diversity of countries would be helpful. Also, different types of families. We have young kids and rarely read stories about families like us who host.
Thank you for the suggestions. Those are good ideas!