Launch of new AgriLife.org, AgriLife Extension, AgriLife Research sites

[Max Malloy]

All,

Wanted to let you all know that we launched the new AgriLife.org,
Texas AgriLife Research, and Texas AgriLife Extension Services sites
yesterday around 4pm. (Of course, due to campus power issues this
morning, the main Computer Information Systems building along with our
AgriLife IT building have been experiencing intermittent power
outages, so we have seen occasional server downtimes, but that is all
out of our control).

This launch represents a strong collaboration between AgriLife
Communications and AgriLife IT, as the new sites are all running in
the new Percussion Content Management System (CMS), which is also the
system that runs the College and related Departmental sites. My
sincere thanks and admiration goes out to our partners in IT for
helping to pull this off, as many of them have put in long hours and
had to do some very impressive information architecture and
programming to get all the bells and whistles we requested.
Specifically Tom Lyster, Gene Curtiss, John Willis and Alan Kurk have
all helped to spearhead the effort from a back-end perspective and we
truly could not have done it without each and every one of them.

I'm proud too of our eMedia team within AgriLife Communications, as
these new sites represent contributions from all of them. Whether it
be Diann Mitchell or Loretta Cortez, who helped in the transition of
content from existing sites to new, or Angel Fattorini, Mark
Cornelius, Jerrold Summerlin and our intern Brooke Catalena who all
provided wonderful video and photo content which really help brings
the sites alive.

The new sites will really let all the talents of our AgriLife
Communications group shine as there now exist many more opportunities
for designers, writers and communications managers to get their hard
work in telling the AgriLife story out in front of our varied
audiences. I'm really, really looking forward to tapping into all
those rich pools of talent to draw out the best on these new sites.

I also want say thanks to Elizabeth Gregory-North, our Interim
Director, for always supporting any efforts to change the model of how
our organization moves forward online. Her support of our team and
assistance in getting us the audience we needed to get our more
aggressive proposals accomplished is very much appreciated.

And moving forward... we're excited to be nearing an interview phase
of final candidates for our open Web Developer position with the
eMedia team, which will allow us to do some very cutting-edge stuff in
the months ahead. Look forward to see some fun stuff involving mobile
versions of these sites, enhancements to what we can do within the CMS
and stronger ties to all our burgeoning social media efforts.

Thanks again to all involved, I'm terribly proud of what we've pulled
off here and unbelievably excited to be a part of what's next.

- Max

http://agrilife.org

http://agrilifeextension.tamu.edu

http://agriliferesearch.tamu.edu