We often talk about the importance of maintaining the relationship with our audiences. We work very hard to introduce ourselves, provide information of value, earn trust and weave ourselves into their lives. But, sometimes, WORK HAPPENS.
Yes, it's true. Here in Web Communications we've been struck speechless (in a blog sense) by large projects, the flu and looming deadlines. I'm sure it's been much the same for many of you who read our blog. After the holidays, we find that the well deserved time off must be repaid---with interest. Oh well, back to the routine and allow me to share with you some of the interesting things we've been doing in the past couple of months.
In January, we were happy to finally launch the new University Registrar's site. This was a very lengthy and complex project. It involved a great deal of skill on the part of the information architect to make a snarled web of academic information accessible and easy to understand. So far the response has been very good. This site was moved into the Cascade Content Management System, allowing us to achieve an important goal from our 2007 list.
In February, we launched a new site for the Reynolds Journalism Institute. This project wasn't on our original planned list for the year, but, we managed to fit it in between November and February, working it in around holidays, flu and the many other assignments already on our plate. It was a masterful piece of project management by our editor and design staff. Kudos for a job well done!
We also managed to offer a little continuing education for ourselves and our campus colleagues during February. We brought Bob Johnson back to conduct another session on Writing Right for the Web. It was helpful and well attended by both content and technical staff here at Mizzou.
In addition, we invited our colleague from Missouri Science & Technology, Andy Careaga, to join us and lead a discussion about the use of social media in public relations. You may already be familiar with Andy through his work with the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) or his Higher Ed Marketing Blog. It was a good discussion and it's very helpful for me to have the luxury from time to time to be a participant in the discussion, rather than the leader.
There are several planned entries coming up for Interface in the next few days and weeks. I'm sorry we've been absent for awhile, but, we're back in the saddle again. Hope you haven't forgotten about us completely!
