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Director's NoteTom Achtor |
The SSEC Media Team plays a key role in developing and disseminating information about SSEC science and engineering research to a range of audiences. It also plays a key role in education and public outreach (EPO), supporting our EPO teams and also helping develop content. In the next paragraphs, I’ll describe the activities of our Media Team (Jean Phillips, Bill Bellon, Mark Hobson, Leanne Avila, Hsuan Pi).
The Media Team develops and maintains the SSEC and CIMSS web pages. SSEC webmaster Bill Bellon, CIMSS webmaster Leanne Avila and Intern Hsuan Pi work together in web page design and applying web technologies to keep our web sites professional, interesting and innovative. Recently we renovated the SSEC top page to bring a new, dynamic look; the site refreshes weekly with new stories of our work. Mark Hobson and others are developing these stories to maintain the dynamic design of the SSEC top page. We are now in the process of a redesign to the CIMSS web top page. The web team works with our science and engineering teams to bring the results of their work into our web domain. Our web team can design and build a site for your project or they can work with the site you build to ensure your site meets UW and SSEC standards.
The Media Team works with our scientists and engineers to write press releases for UW, and the local and national media. These press releases can be short articles about recent success or longer articles with details of a project’s accomplishments. Jean Phillips, Mark Hobson and others work with the UW media group, local reporters and government agency media teams to coordinate the development and dissemination of our material.
The Media Team creates the semi-annual SSEC Newsletter: Through the Atmosphere. We seek to have each issue follow a basic research theme, while also highlighting key accomplishments over the past several months. Then there is the SSEC Booklet, for which the team writes articles that cover most all our work. This is the comprehensive document we give to scientists, engineers, those we collaborate with, those who fund us, and those we want to know more about us. The Booklet was last completed in 2006 but we are now in the process of creating the next generation. This is a several month project that must be fit into our other ongoing schedule, but we hope to have the Booklet completed in the fall. Many of you will soon be contacted by our Media Team writers to request your participation in the Booklet article development process, thus making sure we accurately represent your work.
Finally, as many of you know, I have reduced my appointment in the Center to 50%. As part of the process we have shifted leadership of several groups to a new generation of talented people. In this regard, we have asked Jean Phillips to take over the leadership of the SSEC Media Team. Jean brings both experience and expertise to this new challenge as she broadens her leadership of the Center’s information services. If you have projects, ideas or suggestions for SSEC Media, stop by and talk with Jean.