Clean Cities Website Update Webinar (Text Version)
This is a text version of the video for the Clean Cities Website Update webinar presented on May 26, 2011, by Trish Cozart, National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
COORDINATOR: Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer session of today's conference. At that time, you may press star one to ask a question.
I would like to inform all participants that today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Andrew Hudgins. Sir, you may begin.
ANDREW HUDGINS: Great. Thank you very much. So, good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to participate in the webinar today.
We're very pleased to give you the latest and greatest updates to the Clean Cities website. The Clean Cities Web development team here at NREL has done a fantastic job and have worked very hard to complete this project. And I think we're all very pleased with the outcome. I know we've received some pretty good feedback already from coordinators, so we do appreciate that.
So, you know, without any further ado, I'm going to introduce Trish Cozart, who is the manager for this whole project. Trish manages all the Clean Cities and AFDC websites, so she's our, I'd like to call her, our website guru. So she's going to take you through the improvements and enhancements and changes to the site. So, Trish.
TRISH COZART: Thanks, Andrew. Hi, everybody. I hope everyone can see my screen. I'm going to go through a couple of PowerPoint slides to start with. Just really quick, and then we'll get right on to the tour. I don't think this webinar should last very long; it be pretty quick. And I'd like to go through the website and then give you a few previews of coming attractions.
So to start off, I just want to say thank you to all the coordinators, and DOE headquarter staff, and the regional managers at NETL who helped with this design. We had a lot of people fill out questionnaires, or I talked to individually at the peer exchanges last summer about the website. We had some of you listed there who helped me with some card sorting navigation activities during the leadership retreat in Rapid City. And, as well as part of your information resources team and the NETL group, who helped with the coordinator profiles, which we'll be taking a peak at at the end of this session.
So, thank you very much. One of the things we did, to start with, was really come up with a strategy for what this website purpose was supposed to be—and then focus all of our design around that purpose. And this is our purpose statement for the website. And it's really to inform all the users that come to the Clean Cities program, about the program, encourage stakeholders to join your coalitions, and to provide you guys, the coordinators, with resources and support.
And so our key initiatives in the redesign were these five key initiatives. And I hope you'll see in the redesign how we address those initiatives.
The first was to just help connect stakeholders with the coalitions. To make it easy to find information, to make sure our brand and image was recognizable, connect the key resources, and find great places for you guys to find the resources and connect with each other. So, with no further ado, let's get right into it.
You should be seeing right now, I'm sharing my desktop, the home page of the Clean Cities site. And I'm going to just go through, really quickly, the top navigation and show you some of the highlights.
So on the home page itself, you'll notice one big change right here is the logo. We wanted to make sure we got the Clean Cities logo on there for brand recognition when people came to it. We have a line up here that we're hoping that, a kind of a tag line, which helps people understand right away when they get to the site that it's about partnerships, and it's about transportation, and reducing petroleum right away—without reading anything except that line.
We also have a brand new RSS feed, and I'm scrolling over it right now. And I encourage you guys to subscribe to that. The RSS feed is different than the AFDC's RSS feed. It's new, it's improved, it's better. I think you'll see a constant stream of information coming from EERE vehicle technologies and Clean Cities in that RSS feed. If you have questions about how to use it, please see my e-mail at the end and I'm happy to assist you.
Another thing we did is, we made sure the location map was put on the home page so people could easily find you. And you'll notice the splash announcement area. That's where we will be putting up things we really want people to check out.
Okay. So, the About section. The About section—you'll notice some changes in here. If you guys use any of the content we have on our website and use some of that for your own websites, you might want to make sure and look and see if they're the same anywhere because we change literally every page on this site. So there's a lot of updated numbers. A lot of updated ideas about the way we talk about the program. So it might be a good idea to check that out so your websites match.
And you'll also notice that our mission, over here, we have a little context around the mission from statistics. Some reasons why that mission's important.
Under Goals and Accomplishments, you will see we have these really fun graphs. These graphs used to be static, and listed just going down the page. Now we have them tabbed. And you'll notice that, for example, on the Vehicle Inventory—hopefully everyone can see that. I'm going to scroll up. You are able to deselect, and change the different fuels, to just get the map, or the graph, that you're looking for. And over here, in the top right-hand corner, if you click that, you'll be able to see where different types of files you can download that image.
So if you need to put it in a PowerPoint, or send it to somebody, or adjust it in any way, you'll have access to that.
On to the Coalitions section. This section I'm really excited about. We really tried to beef up the content here to tell a story about what you guys do, why it's important, and what are the benefits of joining your coalition.
Over here, on the right-hand side, we have a Find My Local Coalition button, which takes you back to the locations map as well as the start of what I hope is a series of really great quotes provided by your stakeholders. So if you have some great nuggets of information from quotes from people that really tell testimonies of why joining the coalition is valuable, why Clean Cities tools are valuable, how the funding has help them, we would love to share that quote. So feel free to get with me, or e-mail me, any sort of information you have, and we'll make sure we get those switched up.
Also, you will notice, just another area. The Contacts page is changed. We wanted to put the contacts for the coordinators with their coalition area. And this is now sortable. Before, it was listed by state only, so now if you really were like, "Oh, I was at a conference and I remember that guy's name was Joe, but I don't remember his last name," you could sort by first name and go looking for him. Or last name. Or by coalition. There's a lot of ways you can sort it by state. So I hope that is really helpful.
Over here in the contact information side, the last column, I'm looking when you sort first by state. And I'm looking for Ohio—they're my example. There we are. So, Ohio. You see we've got Sam, and he's got a website link here, to his own coalition website. And he also has a link to Staff Contacts. Now that takes you to his staff page on his website. So if you're a coalition that has a large staff, and you have a staff page on your website that you'd like us to link to, please let me know and we'll make sure we get that link put in.
Okay. Financial Opportunities section. The navigation—the words have changed a little bit, but the content is, in general, the same. The Current Opportunities tell you what current funding opportunities are available. Related Opportunities give you more insight into other places you can look for funds. The one thing we did change, as we moved the Funded Project information, the legacy information about what we've done in the past, over to this side. So, all the money is really together under this one use of navigation.
And, Information Resources, you'll find some new things. We've added a Publications section. And I think this has already proved to be very useful. The list here is all of the Clean Cities publications that are Clean Cities branded.
So if you're looking for a publication that's branded specifically Clean Cities, you can find it in this list here. If you're looking for more publications, of course you want to check out this grey box. We're guiding you to the AFDC, which has an extensive publication search. And, of course, to our archives of the Clean Cities Now newsletter and also the technology bulletins on the AFDC.
This Information Resources section is also where you'll find information about past workshops, and, for example, the Waste-to-Wheels Workshop. You'll find the post-workshop information videos, speakers, agenda. Any information you want to find about those.
And the technical assistance information about the Tigers Teams is still available under Information Resources.
I'm going to skip the Coordinator Toolbox for a second, because I want to hit that last, and head over to News. News and Events, right here on the top navigation, those are new navigation elements to the top navigation that we never had before. One thing that we did with news is, we wanted to put Clean Cities news. This is a listing of everything that comes out to the RSS feeds. Again, here is another way to subscribe to it.
We've moved the Clean Cities Now newsletter under News. Thinking that's an appropriate place for it, where you'll find the last two issues always highlighted. And availability for looking at the archives as well.
And, one of my favorite new things that we've added is a press room. This is an area for media to come and find the latest press releases from the Department of Energy that relate to Clean Cities. And we've had a lot lately. Photos, high-resolution photos, that they can use in newspapers, articles, Web, and what have you. And, as well as some links to b-roll footage for newscasts and media contacts.
Events is pretty much the same as it was before. It will be a standard chart listing events.
So I'd like to head over to the Coordinator Toolbox for a moment and just go over a few things. First of all, you'll notice first off, this announcement box. We'll be putting announcements in there for you. Helpful information. That things we want to guide you to that we think will be interesting for you.
Over in this box, this grey box here, you'll see we have three sections of quick links. These were determined, these quick links were determined, based upon the interviews we've had with you. Our analytics that we looked at on the website that really told us which things were being clicked on the most. Which are the most useful. And, of course, just talking to you and learning more about it from interviews.
So we will continue to watch our analytics, and keep maps on this page, and make sure that what you all are clicking on we can put in the most useful, easiest-to-find spot. And if you have any feedback, please contact me at any time.
Also, one of my favorite new features is this calendar here on the right. We'll be adding retreat events, peer exchanges, webinars as they come up. And this add the calendar feature means that if you just always come to this page and check, you'll be able to find dates and you can click add to my calendar. And if you have Outlook on your computer, it'll add that directly into your Outlook calendar as an appointment.
Over here on the left-hand side, you'll see our new navigation for the Coordinator Toolbox. And this was directly a part of what came out of the card sorting activity that a lot of you participated in in Rapid City. You know, it's the first section's Coordinator Basics. And this is just a real basic information that every coordinator needs to know or should know.
The Program Structure. This is where you'll find information about the different labs, your tele-coordinators, and your coordinator counsel as well. For example, here's the working teams with the counsel.
Reference Materials. Watch for this section to be growing and changing quite a bit. We will have quick reference documents. Other reference materials about developing your coalition start to appear in this area.
You'll also notice on a lot of pages we have these little grad hats. Those hats are an icon representing opportunities for you. For, with Clean Cities University, or other educational opportunities that are available on these subjects.
I'll skip some of these others. I'll just hit the highlights. Outreach is now a section—of all things—that will help you reach out to your stakeholders. So we've got print products. It's about the products we will have here to provide for you that you can either order through Carol Darrow. Exhibit booths—how to order them, what they look like, your logos, maps, photographs that you can get.
Presentations. These are presentations that are already put together. They have note sections in them that tell you all about the fuels or tools. And these are great resources that I encourage you to look at. You can mix and match, pull them apart, do whatever you want. But they're there to help you.
The templates are really things that are blank, and for you to put your own information in. And you'll find we've revamped the press release templates, so take a look at those.
Education and webinars, again, is where you'll find information about CCU, the online learning. The Clean Cities University webinars, which are held. And also the internship program has a page. And I think that's going to be growing, as well, with a lot more information.
Retreats and meetings, where you'll find information about upcoming meetings and past meeting information.
And of course, reporting, where you get into the fuel price report and annual reporting databases.
So that, in essence, is the entire website.
So now what I'd like to do, is show you a few things about what is coming. So right now, to give you an example, let me see. Let's go to coalition contacts. Right now, if I was to want to contact Mark Bentley in Alabama, I might click his biography, and I would see his biography there. And if I clicked here on his coalition, I would get his website. And I could also get it here, in the contact information area.
In the future, and the very near future, we will have something that looks like this for every coalition. This is what we call the coalition profile. So when you hit Bio, you will actually, he scrolled down to Mark Bentley's Bio here. But, and so, just a Bio, we'll also have his contact information and a nice link to your coalition website. A map showing your coalition boundary, with your address of your headquarters.
Also, your Facebook and Twitter links will be available. So people can click right into there.
And then we have a few stat, a stats area where we have some stats about the population of the, your coalition boundary, the area that when you were designated. If you have, are having a special anniversary, there will be a little icon there saying if it's a 5-, 10-, and 15-year anniversary. Hopefully. Also, we're working on this right now—final touches on the alternative fuels stations in your coalition boundary.
And from the annual reporting database, your latest numbers from the previous year on your greenhouse gas emissions avoided, and your petroleum savings, with a handy little graph to show that. And we really hope that this is helpful to media, and everybody coming across, to see the width and depth of coalitions as well as getting them connected to you.
One other thing. If you have any motor week video success stories, those will also appear on this profile.
Here's another example of another one from Dallas. You know, see, if there's two coordinators listed, those will be tabbed. So you'll be able to go between Pam and Mindy, for example, here.
Another thing, I'm just about done. So this is an area that we're working on, and is going to be live here in the next week. Some other things of what's coming next. We are hoping to make these coalition profiles also zip code-based. So that, when you're on the home page, for example, here and right above this map, you, a user, could enter a zip code and it would take them straight to the coalition profile within that zip code.
We also, in our research, found that a lot of coordinators, and pretty much every coordinator I talk to, felt that the Coordinator Toolbox information probably should be behind some sort of log-in. So that we don't confuse other stakeholders coming in and getting lost in the toolbox, which is for really a separate audience. And we completely agree with you. And we are working towards making that a reality as well.
So that is, in a nutshell, the whole redesign. So I'd like to pass it back over to questions.
COORDINATOR: We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one and record your name clearly. Your name is required to ask a question. To withdraw your question, you may press star two. Again, to ask a question, press star one and record your name clearly. And just one moment for the first question.
ANDREW HUDGINS: This is Andrew. While we wait for that first question, I did receive one through the Q and A on the webinar function, so I'll ask it to you, Trish. And that's on the coalition contacts. Is there a way that we can include multi-states so some of the coalitions, they cross boundaries, such as Kansas and Missouri. Is there a way that we can, you know, kind of make sure that people realize that they're on both sides of that border?
TRISH COZART: That's a great question. And something we're working on with our laws and incentives database on the AFDC as well. So I have a note about that, and we will work on getting that resolved quickly. Great question. Thank you.
COORDINATOR: We do have a question from the phone line. It comes from Dick Cromwell. Sir, your line is open.
DICK CROMWELL: Yes. Trish. Outstanding work. Wonderful. We're...
TRISH COZART: (Thank).
DICK CROMWELL: ...doing a little experiment here with a blog. We're finding a lot of our stakeholders can't attend all the meetings that we think they should. So we attend, we record them, and we put them on a blog. Can that blog be put on our coordinator contact page?
TRISH COZART: Oh, on that profile page?
DICK CROMWELL: Sure.
TRISH COZART: Probably not on that page, exactly. Probably on your website itself, would be the best place to put that blog. We're limiting the coalition. Here's an example. We're limiting the coalition contact page just purely to things that are being pulled from our current database. And not doing a lot of specialized coding for each coalition on it. And leaving that up for you guys to, you know, really customize your own websites.
DICK CROMWELL: Okay. Thanks.
TRISH COZART: Thank you.
COORDINATOR: I show no other questions from the phone line.
ANDREW HUDGINS: Yes. And we don't have any other online questions either. So that must have been a very good tour of the website then, Trish. Not many questions.
TRISH COZART: I guess so. Well, feel free, here's my e-mail. Let me go back to the last slide here. That's not the last slide. There. There's my e-mail address everybody, and feel free to e-mail me with questions, comments, ideas. I'm happy to, love to, hear your ideas. Love to hear anything you're struggling with. The Web is very fluid. It changes all the time. So we're happy to make those adjustments and get better as we go. Thank you.
COORDINATOR: That concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at this time.