The BAC has seen a lot of work going on in 2013. First, we had to repair and rebuild the interior of the Boatworks, following the ravages of Hurricane Sandy. Then Belmar completed its long in planning changes to the property, providing us with a far superior road and parking area. More recently we began an effort to fix up the grounds themselves. (the next phase of planting is expected to continue on June 15th- those interested in helping out should contact the BAC for more information) But our improvement efforts would not be complete without a major update to our online presence.
We've had a website from our beginnings as an organization, though the earliest ones were relatively primitive. Of course, back then we didn't have a building, just one major show per year and a few other events, no regular interest groups, and no regular class schedule. The BAC has grown incredibly in the years since we moved into the Boatworks, and our web presence has evolved at the same time. In recent years our own John "Hutch" Hutchinson has been singlehandedly running our comprehensive main site, which required extremely frequent updates to keep up with our crowded schedule of exhibitions, classes, and performances. This spring it was decided to build a whole new website that would include everything important from the old, adding more new functions like the online exhibition entry forms we started using a few months ago, giving it a clean new look, and spreading the responsibility for maintaing it to more people. At the same time we updated our other online sites, and even created new ones, to unify our look and encompass more of the digital experiences of our members.
The site will be a work in progress, but it's close enough that we decided to launch it yesterday. The following people were significantly involved in the effort. Roy Childress was instrumental to designing the new site and to building the main structure. The rest of the committee included Dana Cohoon, Joe Villa, Michael Miller, Paul Bonelli, Rebecca Szabo, Sally Behler, and Zach Szabo. All contributed suggestions to the overall look, organization, functions of the site. In particular, Michael provided photos and graphics (including the new header at the top of this blog) and helped build some pages, Paul also contributed photos and graphics, and Rebecca and Sally spent countless hours sitting at that computer above transferring content from the old site to the new one, as well as building and updating BAC sites on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
How can you find this fabulous new site? Simple, it's the same address as the old one, so however you got there, you can still get there, including clicking the link in the right side column on this blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment