Agriculture Information Technology

Advisory Group (AITAG)

Ag IT Advisory Group – Nov. 10, 2008 – via Videoconference

Margaret Tweten, Grand Forks County/Northeast District; Chris Schauer, Hettinger REC; Gordy Bradbury, Williston REC; Sheila Weisz, Wells County; Eric Berg, Animal Sciences; Randy Grueneich, Barnes County; Becky Koch, Ag Communication, ex-officio
Guests: Bob Bertsch, Ag Communication; Mike Strode, Dickinson REC

Introduction
Margaret asked members to introduce themselves. Bob Bertsch was introduced as the new Web technology specialist in Ag Communication who will lead the transition to CMS and possible use of Web technologies such as wikis, blogs, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. She shared the AITAG membership rotation and explained that AITAG is advisory to VP Coston and Directors Hauck and Grafton.

TYPO3 Content Management System (CMS)
About 25 on-campus staff have been trained by ITS. Bob will focus on training off-campus staff, and on-campus staff will continue to take training from ITS. All pages that go into the CMS will have new www.ndsu.edu/ URLs so Roger Egeberg will keep busy creating redirects, though research shows that about 75 percent of information is now found by searching. The CMS will be much flatter than the current hierarchy, URLs will be shorter and authors won’t have near as much design flexibility/responsibility.

Off-campus training could take place this spring in conjunction with Extension district support staff conferences.

Will TYPO3 support a password-protected Intranet like we now use for calendar, Feedlist, file transfer, e-mail lists, etc.?

2007-09 IT Plan Goals
Becky will develop a status grid of the indicators to show AITAG members the progress.

Staff Directory
Roger Egeberg is wrapping up the test version of an online faculty and staff directory that each person will fill in with information beyond office address (background, degrees, research interests, etc. and a photo).

Videoconferencing
The chancellor supported Agriculture and University Extension’s request for one-time funding to replace videoconference equipment at 23 locations that have old equipment so won’t be supported after September 2010. Without Mike Miller and Dan Nudell in the western half of the state, RECs and county Extension offices are to call the ITS help desk for support.

E-mail Lists
All Agriculture and University Extension e-mail lists have moved from @ndsuext.nodak.edu to @listserv.nodak.edu. They’re listed on the Ag Info Center Intranet.

Return to Ag IT Advisory Group Home
Go to NDSU Agriculture Policy Statements