General: March 2006 Archives

Because of our attendance at Sungard Summit -- a conference for products including the Luminis Content Management System, Luminis Portal, and Banner -- both Dan and I will be out of the office around March 29 - April 5. While I would ask that anything non-critical be held until we return, I will be monitoring my e-mail from Summit in case you need to reach us.

At Summit, we'll be attending sessions covering best practices for managing content management systems and portals as well as the development roadmap for those products. Hopefully we'll be able to share more about where the LCMS product is going and how it will impact Taylor.

It is my pleasure to introduce two new members of Taylor's Online Communications team:

• Dan Reeves, Assistant Director of Online Communications (TUU emphasis): Dan comes to Taylor with experience as an Internet Project Manager with Casio, Inc. and a broad background in multimedia and new media production. His responsibilities as Assistant Director will include content development and oversight, project management, training and support for online communications. Additionally, he will back-up the Director of Online Communications when necessary. Dan started on March 13.
• Phil Macomber, Online Communications Technical Administrator: Phil transitions from the Information Technology department where he has been working in support of the current content management system. Phil will be responsible for development, maintenance and administration of presentation templates, scripting and middleware that support the University's online communications efforts. This position will officially start on June 1 though Phil's involvement in current efforts to move to a new version of the content management system has already closely aligned him with our department.

Additionally, within the past year, Tricia Halferty has been named Assistant Director of Online Communications (TUFW emphasis).

I welcome all three and hope you will too.

Online Communications. What's that? At Taylor, online communications includes the content and design of various Web and Internet-based media, including:

• public Web sites
• the myTaylor portal
• forms and surveys
• streaming media
• e-mail newsletters
• blogs
• forums
• others

All of these tools provide University departments and programs a variety of ways to communicate with, provide information to and serve our various audiences online. While each medium can be used effectively on its own, we group them together as "online communications" since they are most effective when leveraged together as part of a comprehensive and cohesive strategy.

Helping you develop and execute such a strategy is why the University's Online Communications personnel, and this blog, exist. For us, we're using this blog to reach out to you: to keep you better informed, to provide one place to go for information and resources, and to answer any questions or comments that you might have.

Stay tuned. There's lots more to come...