By Rhett Umphress

Jayson Manship is the director of operations at URBaCS. Along with partner and president Rob Wagoner, they are 50/50 partners of their technology and software company that works with small to mid-size businesses on their Web site, social media, blogging…basically all the online aspect that a company needs today.

URBaCS became involved in the “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” build when Derek Wilder, CEO of Hallmark Homes, called him and asked him to work on the build as a media liaison. They asked him to put together a social media strategy for Hallmark.

This is not URBaCS’ first build. The duo worked on the “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” build in Indianapolis along with Estridge, the construction company that worked on the Indy home. When Wilder went to Estridge looking for people that had experience at that build to help in Bunker Hill, they recommended URBaCS. URBaCS had worked with Hallmark before and was willing to join the numerous sponsors that the construction company was recruiting.

Comparing the two builds is hard to do. The Indianapolis site was a two-week season finale build, and the Bunker Hill build was completing a house in only seven days.

“The two builds were completely different,” Manship said. “I didn’t know what to expect the first time around.”

After graduating from a steep learning curve, he said that the second build gave him the opportunity to apply new methods that were not possible before. One major difference was space. The Indianapolis build was done on the outskirts of downtown, where finding a working area was at a priority. Bunker Hill, with the donated field site across the street from where the new Cowan-Brown house was being built, offered the luxury of work space for URBaCS to do their job. The only downside:

“I ended up walking around a lot to find people,” Manship said.

Another luxury of this second build was the direct connection Manship had with the owners of Hallmark. Going into the build he knew that he had more insight into the builder. Also, he knew that he had his teams in place to make sure everything was taken care of as planned.

“Having the ear of the owner made things easier,” he said. “It makes an absolute difference.”

After creating an infrastructure for the build, URBaCS called on the support of Ball State and Anderson students to help generate content for the Twitter account, the blog, etc. [Ed. Note: As a Ball State representative of the media team, I am extremely grateful for all the help that Manship and Wagoner gave us to make our contributions possible].

“[The students] handled all the heavy lifting for us,” Manship said.

Manship said that one of his favorite moments of the build was when Heather Cowan thanked him personally for his contribution. And after spending two weeks of his life working day and night to help build homes for two families, is he ready for another go-around?

“I would be willing to do either one again,” Manship said.

For more information about URBaCS, go to http://www.urbacs.com